Blockage or Samson Reversed
by Chameleon2
Summary: After finding out that LuthorCorp pollution caused what's become known as 'Cradle Cancer', Lex guiltily funds research to cure the kids. However, the Kryptonite-based treatment has freaky effects, not wholly unforeseen.
1. Chapter 1

Hello! Do you know how the compulsive need to write fanfic can suddenly just pounce on you and squeeze you to obey even though you really don't want to write anything? Especially since every episode of SV I'm seeing (am now at s5.8) convinces me more that the show's actually going to be crap? And that, with more than one and a half season to go, I'm probably missing some really important points that would make this story so AU I'll probably won't be able to finish it even if I wanted?

But anyway…: ) This popped up in my head. I have no clue what it'll be. Lex is in it. Chloe's in it. Clark will probably be in it. There will be OCs that won't be Mary Sues. I'm not sure if it will be shippy or completely gen—but on the redeeming side, it will definitely have plot! Yay!

Soo. Let me know what you think. If it stinks, tell me so I can burn it and put some antiseptic on it.

Blockage

Rating: PG-13

Spoilers: up to S. 5, with little snaps from later seasons, depending on what I find preposterous and what usable : )

One: in which Lex saves children

Metropolis was in the grip of a disgusting, weak winter that filled the streets with dirty slush and had people slipping, tripping and falling through occasionally ankle-deep muck. Any virginal snow descending feather-like from the heavens was carefully scheduled in the hours between two and five in the very early morning, so that no one ever saw a fluffy-white blanket with twinkling city lights; around sunrise thaw would set in and by the time it was light enough to see, the white had turned to gray, brown or piss-yellow, and only served to inspire curses that were better left unsaid so close to Christmas time as business people slid and glided over the slippery streets to their jobs.

Lex Luthor abhorred Metropolis in December. Firstly because the closer the year's last month drew towards its end and the more joyous the city's buzz became, the more morose he felt, not, never, feeling even the slightest bit of anticipation about celebrating Christmas—not with anyone he was in any way related to, anyway. Christmas with his father and the inevitable throng of guests (Christmas with Lionel as his only companion had actually resulted in a near-suicide attempt and he wasn't keen on experiencing that again) usually kept him more or less pleasantly occupied, and more often than not he'd wake up in bed next to some pretty woman in the morning, but to say that it was a time of comfort and joy really was an exaggeration.

The second reason why Lex hated Metropolis in December, and even more with this horrible warm winter, was the amount of snot dripping, being wiped and blown into hankies, sprayed and sneezed in his presence. Half of Metropolis was ill with this bug, not even his bodyguards and colleagues had escaped, and while he stood in the elevator to the twenty-third floor of LuthorCare, he gritted his teeth while he listened to the slobbering sound of Miss Decan snorting what sounded like half a liter of mucus into her Kleenex. Where did she keep all that stuff before it came out? Surely you couldn't keep that much snot anywhere in your head? Perhaps she had been mutated by the Kryptonite they used in this place, and had turned into a snot-freak. Special power: spontaneous nasal cavity growth to store mucus. A snot monster. He closed his eyes as she stuffed her soggy hanky into the pocket of her lab coat, fished a new one out of the package and continued her honking. To think he had considered asking her out after this visit. He shivered at the thought of kissing her.

"Does it ever stop?" Lex couldn't help asking when floor 18 up to 22 had past and she was still blowing. Just as the elevator came to a standstill with a modest 'ping' she wiped her nose and shot him a watery smile.

"I'm beginning to lose hope." She looked at him with clear envy, and for friendship's sake he tried not to smirk.

Lex Luthor did not get colds. Lex Luthor's face was smooth and pale from shiny pate to hairless jaw; no chapped lips, no raw nose, no swollen eyes or fever-blotched cheeks; he was staring at her down his long nose with a slight smile that held a hint of pity, no compassion at all, and a not unfounded revulsion. "I'm not even allowed to go with you to visit the kids," she continued, leading him through the hallways in a cadence of clicking heels. "Too risky with their resistance so far down." She brought a new Kleenex to her face and sneezed explosively. Lex winced.

"I'm surprised there are any people at all present," he said, then studied the deserted hallways and asked, "Are there?"

Miss Decan made a strenuous effort at tinkling laughter and produced a sound rather like a hog reaching orgasm. Lex had heard that sound in Smallville, and had not thought he would ever hear it again. He had to bite his lip to keep from laughing in her face.

"Seven on this floor," she said, rubbing her temple. "They keep to the coffee room and the treatment and bed rooms. I'm going to drop you off there—banished by illness, you see." Her smile was tremulous and fake. Valerie Decan loved her patients as much as they loved her, and Lex realized that her disappointment at not being able to accompany him did not in the slightest refer to him, but to the fact that she wouldn't be able to see her kids. "Anyone displaying even a sign of the flu isn't allowed in. Which reminds me, Lex, you'll have to don…"

"I know, I know," he said impatiently. They had reached the cantina. Six people sat sprawled around a table, coffee cups piled up in a tower in the middle of the table. One of them saw them coming through the windows, hastened to his feet and opened the door.

"Mister Luthor," a man not much older than Lex said, holding out his hand. Lex shook it, feeling relieved when he detected no sign of cold in the man's pink face. "Valerie."

"He's all yours, David," Miss Decan said. "Mister Luthor, please call me when you're ready. I'll come and pick you up again."

Lex studied her slumped figure. She really looked awful. "Why," he said, "won't you just let me let myself out and go home to get some rest? I really doubt you'll beat your cold hanging around this germ-infested building." Valerie Decan's facial expression was hard to read because of her watery eyes and swollen nose; he thought she might be incredulous. He gave her an encouraging smile.

"My work…" she began, but he gently interrupted her with the honest truth: "Won't go anywhere. You're sick. Go home and to bed. Take a few days off until you can face your kids again. How long are you contagious again, after the worst's passed? Two day? Three? I'm sure you'd be better much sooner if you go home now, than when you stay here pushing yourself. Don't you agree, mister Reese?"

Reese nodded, and after a few mumbled protests, Miss Decan nodded her defeat. Lex waved at her when she looked back on her way to the elevator, and David Reese laughed.

"Congratulations, Mister Luthor. So far no one's been able to make her go home, even though it's clear she can't see the kids in her condition." He placed a light hand in the small of Lex's back to usher him in, immediately pulling back the moment Lex started to move. Mister Luthor-call-me-Lex might be Mister Congeniality himself, but he didn't much like to be touched.

"Well," drawled Lex, "So far it wasn't her boss that told her to leave. Being a CEO does have it advantages, occasionally." He inclined his head at the men and women at the table. "Ladies. Gentlemen." He took a deep breath. "So let's get me decontaminated and unhazarded and at the mercy of these kids."

It had all started a little less than a year ago, when the medical world was in upheaval about a recently discovered, frighteningly aggressive form of pancreal cancer that seemed to only hit children below the age of fifteen. Between moment of identification of the cancer and time of death were roughly ten to twenty days, no exceptions. No recovery, no life-lengthening operations, nothing. When this cancer struck, the child died, and no treatment as of yet made any difference. When Lex found out about the cancer ten months ago, he funded a research, provided the lab, and urged the specialists to erase the words 'terminal' and 'untreatable' from their dictionary. Cancer still was a bit of an obsession of his (while he was reading that first bleak and dooming report, he had unconsciously dug up his mother's watch from the drawer he kept it in, and was slightly surprised to find it all but blocking the blood stream to his right hand because he'd fastened it above his Seiko), and whenever there was a new strain of it, Lex felt the compulsive need to battle it like a personal enemy. He had added another twenty million to his team's funds after watching a TV program discussing the traumatic effects of this terrible, fatal disease. It featured seven parents crying over their son's or daughter's cold corpse/bed/favorite teddy bear/pet—it was cheap, tear-jerking television, a shameless exposure of people's deepest grief, and the greedy dramatics of the TV presenter made Lex drink too much, too quick, and throw his glass against the wall, but it undoubtedly achieved what it had set out to do: it made people aware. It also made Lex Luthor bawl like a little girl and start serious investigations.

The moment he found out that the cancer was caused by a LuthorCorp-developed (LuthorCorp, not LexCorp, thank god), long since abandoned and destroyed type of crop fertilizer that just happened to have contaminated a few batches of grain that had then been distributed all over the country in the form of granola bars, he had first drunk himself into a stupor and then drawn up a plan and stuck to it.

All links connecting LuthorCorp and the Fertilizer were destroyed. There were very few in the first place, which was why it took him so long to find a trace, but after Lex's intervention it was impossible to see any connection at all.

All children with the symptoms of the new Cradle Cancer were given the opportunity to get sponsored treatment at LuthorCare. Lex's spokesman appeared on television seven times to remind America that all local hospitals were qualified to do blood tests, and that, if one's child seemed uncommonly tired, had lost its appetite, or seemed ill, it was a good idea to just TAKE one of these tests.

All Newspapers were called to publish Lex Luthor's campaign against cancer speech, in which he mentioned his own experiences with a loved one dying of cancer and said that he saw it his personal duty to conquer the disease.

All people of Metropolis saw a small piece of Lex Luthor's soul on television that evening, and whether they liked him or not, they saw the passion in his eyes, heard the emotion in his voice, and knew that smirking serpent or not, Lex Luthor was going to go against Cradle Cancer like Saint George against the Dragon, and he would ultimately triumph or die in the attempt.

The morning after that particular broadcast Lex found 800 letters on his desk (all opened, checked for bombs and BSE powder) from people touched by his speech. There also was a text message from Chloe Sullivan. It only read _You know you want to give me another interview! _ and a smiley, but it made him smile. Not as much, though, as the email he got from Clark. He was sure it was meant to be cold, but somehow the words _Lex, if Julius Caesar had been able to orate like you did yesterday, he'd have died in bed instead of bleeding out in front of the senate. You made Lois cry. Congratulations. _sounded almost affectionate. Lois had also sent him a letter, since she did not have his private email address. It threatened to find out whether this whole cancer thing was linked to LuthorCorp in the first place, and if so, she'd have his shining head on a platter, but he only smirked and put it back on the pile with the other letters. He wasn't afraid of Lois Lane. She might have a nose like a greyhound, but Luthor-covered dirt was very hard to find and even more difficult to dig up—and in this case Lex had been very, very thorough in burying it.

Over the next few days he received another total of 3.541 letters, which was a bit of a record, especially since 98 percent of those letters proclaimed their support and called him a savior, which was quite a difference from the 'you're the antichrist!' mailings he usually got after a broadcast.

And so the normally rather insignificant suffering of others had become his personal crusade. In between business meetings and company takeovers, he visited the labs of LuthorCare, encouraged his specialists to work with green, black, red, yellow, orange and any other color meteorite, which he took care never to call Kryptonite, and donated a total of three liters of his own, meteor-mutated, super healthy blood so that they might see what kind of effect it had.

The first month, twenty-one kids below the age of twelve were shipped off to floor 23 of LuthorCare. Of those twenty-one, four died the first week, and the rest died in the second. Ten new cases came and died within a week. The third week welcomed another fifteen new sick children. Seven died within two weeks, the remaining eight…lived. For another four days. Then two died shortly after one another, another lived for another three days and then died, and the remaining five slipped into a coma. The cancer had been brought to a stop, but their bodies were so weakened by the ravages of illness that it could hardly be considered a success. Four of the five died quietly in their sleep; the parents of the last one transferred him from LuthorCare to another hospital, where he remained unconscious, hooked up to a respirator, until finally he as well died as a result of general organ failure. The treatment Lex's scientists had come up with was successful, but they simply had no time to test and retest it because the children were dying under their eyes.

All parents who came to drop their children off for treatment were asked to sign a consent form that permitted LuthorCare to expose their children to experimental treatment. Very few parents refused to sign the form. As it was, their kids would die within the next two weeks; even if it was experimental, Lex's medicines offered them the only chance at survival they were likely to get.

The first child to survive more than one month past her initial and very literal deadline, was a girl called Cory Dean. She was considered a small victory, even though her vitals were so weak she could hardly be called alive. But she was breathing, the cancer cells hadn't spread, and while she was too weak to lift even a finger she was conscious, and there was all reason to believe that she would survive. Hope shimmered on the horizon, and seventeen more children were admitted to floor 23.

Channel Four made another weepy documentary about Cory Dean and her family, and Lex Luthor was again bombarded with fan mail. This time Chloe called him on his cell phone and begged him for an interview.

"Please," she pleaded tinnily into his ear, "Just say you'll do it. If you don't, they'll send Clark or Lois, or that horrible twit of a Johansson. Please, Lex, for exploding houses and jail sentences of the past, please, please give me this interview! I'll even come and see you in Smallville, if you're there. Just…give me an interview!"

Usually, the press made an appointment with his P.A. Chloe always tried the direct way first. Lex, gazing at the muted documentary looped on his VCR, ran his fingers over the tiny, bald, white girl's image on his flat screen, tracing a snub nose, the thin, pink shell of an ear, and thought of granola bars.

"Chloe," he said, voice soft so the roughness in his throat wouldn't show, "there's nothing worth an interview."

Shocked, outraged silence on the other side of the line. Then, "Lex, your program… LuthorCare's program…it's saved that little girl's life! She would've been dead if not for your research, your funding, your…adamancy to find all these kids and bring them here. She's from a poor family, if you hadn't insisted these children be treated for free, she'd…"

"Chloe." Cory's mother was on. She was crying and hugging her limp little daughter. A plain woman, unshapely, with dyed hair that showed gray in the roots. Yet a mother, overjoyed to find her child alive and the child, smiling…god, she was…what? Ten years old? Twelve? She'd been eating granola bars for a few years, and the poison that LuthorCorp had used until someone (his father, some other idiot?) decided was just a little too dangerous had started some kind of chain reaction in her body until…

Now the father joined his wife and daughter. A big man with a tattoo on his arm, unshaved, boorish, the kind of man Lex secretly despised—but laughing, tears rising but blinked away as he caressed his girl's cheek and wrapped his arm around his wife. Two people sitting on and around a little bald kid's bed, holding each other, loving each other. Lex hadn't thought he'd create such a mental roller coaster for himself. He hadn't thought it would _hurt_ so much, still, after all these years. That the similarity and the gigantic difference would hurt this goddamn _badly_.

"Chloe," he repeated, when he realized she'd actually shut up and was now waiting for him to finish his sentence, "when…if…when she's actually doing better you'll get your interview. Exclusively, I promise you. But for now…Let's not cry victory yet, alright?"

She was silent for a moment. When she next spoke her voice had gained that warm tone he'd heard a thousand times, when she and Clark and Lana had been innocent children and the reporter in Chloe was more of an act than a persona. "Are you ok, Lex?"

Concern. He smiled into the blind phone to get his voice right.

"Of course I'm ok, why do you ask?"

"Nothing. I just…heh. I belatedly realized that this might be…you know…painful for you."

Just like that he knew that she was watching the program as well, and that she had, indeed belatedly for an ace reporter, made the connection. Little bald kid, check. Loving parents…check, but not really. Fatal disease, check. And she didn't even know about Julian. He made a non-committal sound and sipped from his Scotch.

"No interviews," the warm tone was still there, but hidden behind her chirpy optimism. "Care for a cup of coffee instead? I mean, not now, obviously, but well, you know. Oh, listen to me dazzle and seduce you with my lingo. Coffee. Whenever you feel like it. Just give me a call."

"Why, Miss Sullivan, are you asking me out on a date?" Lex asked, deliberately misunderstanding her intentions, and he smiled as he heard her forceful exhale crackle on her cell.

"Yes," she said sarcastically, "that must be it. I'm asking you out. For coffee."

Lex watched the credits of the program roll by and turned off the TV.

"I won't be available for the next few weeks," he said, and he could swear he could hear her pout.

"When you lived in Smallville you'd ALWAYS make time for us."

"That's because I wasn't trying to take over the world when I lived in Smallville."

"Or trying to save children with cancer," Chloe shot right back. "I understand, Lex. That's why I said you could call me. For coffee, for an interview, hell, for a chat when you're fed up with the High and Mighty. Just call."

"I know," he said, although she hadn't asked him anything. "Thanks, Chloe."

"Anytime," she said briskly. "Well, some of us actually have to work for a living. I'm back to my poor neglected column—which I should probably lengthen with about seven hundred words since you won't give me an interview…"

"Stop wheedling, Chloe, it doesn't become you."

"I could make a fortune taping our conversation…"

"You do that and I'll make sure you'd come to a swift yet unhappy demise," Lex promised pleasantly. He wasn't afraid Chloe would ever do such a thing. Firstly, because he trusted her; despite being a reporter she was good with secrets and confidential information. Secondly, because she knew he would live up to his promise. They were both comfortable with the resulting understanding. Which, Lex pondered at times, was yet another indication at the utter weirdness of the people he considered friends. "Good night, Chloe."

"Night, Lex."

He finished the rest of his bottle of Scotch before going to bed, and dreamt fitfully of interviews conducted by bald children.

The following day, Lex visited LuthorCare to see the results of the Kryptonite-based treatment himself, and while he was talking with one of his employees, the woman said, "Why don't you visit the children yourself?"

That woman was Valerie Decan. She had absolutely nothing to do with science. Instead, she was there as a child councilor, someone the kids could confide in. She was in her mid-thirties, handsome if not beautiful, had brown hair pulled up in a bun, a too-big mouth with an infectious smile, and warm, brown eyes that instantly inspired trust and amity. Lex instantly recognized her as the kind of woman who could effortlessly soothe and comfort scared, sick children, and who could probably just as effortlessly soothe any adult male she thought could benefit of her abilities. Apparently, she thought he would not only benefit from her abilities, but that he was in dire need of them. The moment Miss Decan's eyes fell on his face, he could actually feel her do some kind of ocular MRI scan, searching for trauma—he could almost _hear_ her findings listed in a tiny little computer voice: _trauma's found_: _Social outcast due to lack of hair from the age of nine, due to exorbitant wealth of parents, due to lack of childhood friends; mentally abused by father as a child; witnessed infant brother's death by the hands of his mother; took blame for death of said brother; lost mother prematurely—to cancer, beep, beep; betrayed own father; betrayed only friend; was betrayed by every lover he ever had; rebellious nature; lonely genius complex; twisted Oedipus complex; outcome: needs love, love, love._

He took a step back from her beam of all-encompassing care, and asked, "What good would that do? Most of them probably don't even know who I am."

"Come now, Mister Luthor," she laughed. "Even if they don't know you by sight, they're quite aware that it's you who's making their treatment possible." Her expression sobered. He was standing in her office, two big files in his hands and with no intention to stay any longer than he had to on this floor of death and miracles, when she said, "These children are not only confronted with death every day, Mister Luthor. They are still children, and their predicament makes them quite adjustable. Dying isn't their greatest fear, or at least not their only fear."

Lex blinked, unsure where she was going. The longer he was subjected to her sincere gaze, the more he wanted to get out. However, she seemed to expect him to say something, so he queried, "Then what is it they fear—fear more than death, you say?"

"Resentment," she said.

He raised his eyebrow.

"Resentment? They're _sick children_, why would anyone resent them?"

"Look at them, Mister Luthor." She flipped the blinds of her office window, and twenty seven children turned their face towards the movement. Twenty seven small, pale (apart from the four black children, who also seemed strangely devoid of color), bald children, rendered sexless by their illness and the treatment of that illness. It was as if he saw himself, twenty three times reflected. "They have lost everything. Their health, their hair, their life, their direct future. The newest medicines seem to be working, but the side effects are…" she trailed off, then continued, softly, "Yesterday one of the newcomers died, and they have no certainty whatsoever that they'll be more lucky than poor Ricky Donahue." The children, unable to make anything out behind the blinds, had lost interest and continued with what they'd been doing; playing, reading, or sleeping. "What I mean to say," Miss Decan continued, "is that they've been turned into freaks. Even if they'll survive there's a good chance their hair won't grow back, and two of the girls have displayed …how to put it…unusual behavior."

Lex felt a cold shiver pass along his backbone. _Don't cry for me, Smallville freakshow. The truth is, I never left you_. "What, exactly," he asked cautiously, "do you mean with unusual behavior, Miss Decan?"

She gestured to the files in his hand. "You'll find it all in there. Nothing serious, but…Well, Jessica can predict certain things. Small things. Like cards in a pack. And Lisa no longer needs her glasses, although she had minus 3 on one side, and could hardly see anything with her other eye. But that is not what I'm trying to say. What I do mean is, they consider themselves outcasts because of the way they now look, and the way they are treated by their friends and family—as deadly ill, fragile beings—doesn't help their sense of security." She gave him a smile. "You, however, would give them an example that would actually help them."

"Because I'm bald?" he drawled. "Wow, Miss Decan, you really know how to make a man feel wanted."

"I think you know perfectly well what I mean," she said, the warmth of her smile dimming. Lex made a mental note that Yes, she'd catalogued him as flawed and in need o cuddling, but her kids were more important to her than the odd fractured billionaire. He liked that. It made her a little less scary. "You're young, successful, self-assured," her smile widened again. "Richer than God. Almost impossibly arrogant. Or shouldn't I have said that? Perhaps I should have said comfortable with yourself." Lex grinned back at her; he simply couldn't help himself.

"And smooth as a billiard ball. A freak among freaks. I get it, Miss Decan."

"Please, Mister Luthor, call me Valerie."

"You just made me state the gleaming obvious, Miss Decan. I don't think I'm ready to go to first name base yet."

To her credit, she flustered. "I didn't mean…I'm sorry if I…" She stopped as she noted his smirk. "It would really help their self-esteem," she finally muttered. "And it wouldn't do badly as PR, either."

Lex rolled his eyes. Why did everyone automatically assumed that he only did unpleasant things, like, for instant, chat with dying little children, because it made him look good to the outer world?

"Miss Decan, if I were to visit these children, no one will know. No one but you, these kids, and me. Do I make myself clear?" He did, obviously, but her confused expression told him she understood none of it. He sighed. "Young, successful and richer than God I might be, but if you think that me hugging cancerous little children will make me look better in the eyes of the public, you are sadly mistaken. They'd see it as false sympathy. I really don't need any more people proclaiming me…" He stopped and pulled up one corner of his mouth. "Well, I'm sure you've read the papers."

"Would it be that?" she asked. "False sympathy?" Her voice was curious rather than accusing—such a lovely change from Lana and Clark. Lex shrugged.

"If you weren't trained to do so, would you feel comfortable addressing two dozen sick ten-year-olds" _who all remind you of yourself when you were at your most vulnerable, with the added bonus of emitting the same smell as your mother just a few weeks before she died_, "whose only correlation to you is that they have no hair? I might as well ask you to host a meeting for the CEOs of Shell, Marcus&Marcus and Wayne Industries."

"I see," they said, crossing her legs as she leant against her desk. "That might be pretty daunting. They don't bite, though."

"Neither do the CEOs of Shell, Marcus&Marcus and Wayne Industries," countered Lex. He held out the files to her; she took them and stashed them behind her. "Still, I'd much rather face them than those children. Much more in common." He broadened his shoulders, straightened his spine and asked, "Is there anything I shouldn't say? Any topic I should skirt about?"

"Not talking about dying would probably be a good idea," Miss Decan said. Her smile now shone so brightly Lex could feel freckles pop up on his nose. "For the rest…they're _children_, Mister Luthor. I'm quite sure they'll come up with some subjects. Just…don't loose your patience."

"I'm actually quite good with children," Lex reassured her. _Apart from when they're psychic. Then they say I'm evil and warn their friends about me._ He resisted the urge to straighten his tie, certain the children couldn't care less.

"I'm sure you are, Mister Luthor," she laughed, and led him to the door.

"Call me Lex," he said, opened the door and faced the crowd.

Valerie Decan followed him inside, but kept at the door, leaving Lex to make his way through the hallway of beds. There were a total of thirty beds in the room, all with a meter's space in between, and with curtains on a rail that could be pulled around the bed, shielding it completely from view. At the moment all curtains were pulled back, and the three empty beds were covered in toys. At the far end of the room, near the window, was some sort of play corner holding a climbing rack with a plastic slide and a miniature log cabin, a small swing, and a huge number of plastic toy cars, stuffed animals, dolls and other play things. Most of the children swarmed around the slide and the cabin, while some lay in bed, either sleeping or reading. Whatever they were doing, they all stopped when Lex entered the room and regarded him with curious faces, silent and alert like a pack of hounds.

Oh, for the CEOs of a few world-leading companies…

Then, one of the older children murmured, "Lex Luthor!", and his name rippled through the room as if it meant something to them. "Lex Luthor! It's Mister Luthor!"

"Uh, yeah," he said with a lopsided smile. "Hey."

"Go on," whispered Miss Decan from the doorstep. "They won't bite."

Lex kept this in mind as a tiny boy (unless girls now also wore pjs with Transformers on them) came running up to him and stared up at him as if he were a mountain.

"Are you really Mr Luthor?" he asked with a little hoarse-shouted voice. Lex smirked.

"Well, my father's usually addressed as Mr Luthor," he said. "I'd rather you just called me Lex."

"My daddy says you're the scum of the earth and should be shot down with a saw-off," the boy informed him. "D'you want to see my electric train? It's really cool. I've made a track all around my bed, see? If I had another one I could make a loop and make them crash into each other. D'you want to see it?"

Lex, still reeling from the boy's casual remark about the saw-off, felt himself being taken by the hand and dragged over to a bed. Between its legs a small red train rattled round and round; a twelve-pack of AAA batteries functioned as a hillock as well as a power source.

"Look!" the boy cried, pressed a button and listened in rapture as a mechanical howling issued from the train's locomotive. "It whistles!"

"Awesome," said Lex, trying to keep the sarcasm from his voice. The boy beamed up at him, and it occurred to Lex that he probably had no idea what a saw-off was. He relaxed a little. How old was this kid anyway? Four? Five? Far too young to have any idea about who Lex was, and what he stood for. As for the other kids…Like moths drawn to a flame, they had begun to drift towards the train-boy's bed, circling Lex as he squatted on the floor, settling down on the beds near the train tracks or plopping down on the floor. Lex wasn't sure he liked being surrounded like this, but he forced his body to remain relaxed and gazed at them with amiable interest. Again, it was as if he were looking in an age-distorting mirror and saw himself just after his mother had died: too big, empty eyes in a pale face—but not all the kids were like that. On the contrary, most of them gazed back at him with fighting spirit fairly sparking from their eyes, their bald heads raised proudly, faces daring him to comment on their appearance. That, as well, reminded Lex of himself.

"So," a girl of about twelve, thirteen began. "You're like us."

"Not completely," he said. "I was never sick. But yes, I'm pretty much like you." He ran a hand over his head. "No hair at all."

"If you weren't sick," a black boy with Scooby Doo on his t-shirt said, "why'd you loose your hair?"

"I was in a meteor shower. The stuff we use in your medicines was also in the meteors."

"What's a meteor?" a truly tiny child asked, but before Lex could open his mouth, another child had already explained in a hurried whisper. "So that meteor shower cut off all your hair?" the child concluded.

Lex nodded.

"How old were you then?" yet another girl asked. She wore a thin yellow cotton hat with plastic flowers around the rim.

"I was nine," said Lex.

"I'm nine too!" the girl exclaimed. "My name's Emmy!" A flood of names then passed over Lex's head. He tried to remember them all, forgot most of them straight away, but connected a few to the faces that stood out to him. The boy with the train was called Ronny, there were two Michaels, a girl called Lexie (which made both of them smirk), Jessica (he remembered her because Miss Decan had mentioned her, and Lisa for the same reason), Scooby-boy was Jack, and his twin-sister was Tina. Jack and Tina. Both son and daughter had been fond of granola bars.

Now they'd all introduced each other, the kids obviously decided that the time for reserve had passed.

"Where was this meteor shower?" they asked. "Was it scary? Did he get a rock on his head? Did they make him sick?—no, idiot, he just said he wasn't sick, did he? Oh yeah, that's right, he was never sick. Was that right?"

Lex nodded. "Whatever that meteor did to me, it only made me healthier. I'm hoping the same will happen to you."

"But my _hair_!" Emmy wailed, rubbing her fingers over her hat. "Won't it ever grow back? I don't want to be bald for the rest of my life!"

"That's because you're a stupid bitch," one of the boys said caustically.

"Now, now," said Lex, but Emmy didn't seem much insulted. She was a very pretty girl, with large blue eyes and golden hoops in her ears that stood out strangely without the frame of hair.

"Anyway, the acerbic boy continued, "your mom'll give you a nice wig and you won't see a thing. Her mom comes by all the time," he said to Lex. "with wigs and hats and all that stuff. She can't bear to see Emmy—or any of us!—looking all bald like babies. She makes us wear baseball caps when she visits. She sucks!" he added forcefully, and several of the other children nodded sagely. Emmy flushed, but she pulled her hat further over her ears and remained silent. Lex felt horrible for her. When he first heard that his bloodwork would be used to cure the kids, and later, when the treatment actually worked, all he'd felt was pride and contentment. Now, he wondered if they should have searched in another direction. He _knew_ how hard it was to be ten and bare as a frog—and he had been a boy. How much worse would it be to be a bald _girl_? Then again, he had survived, even at Excelsior, which very likely was a far harsher surroundings than the schools these kids went to. He had more than survived. He had flourished because of who he was, and how he looked. And when the children began to ask how he'd dealt with those issues, he found he answered them without even having to think about it, nor did he hold back on the truth. He owed them as much.

"Did your friends tease you at school?"

"My real friends didn't." Not that he'd had many. "But yes, I was often called names or even beaten up."

"And what did you do then?"

"Well," said Lex, "My father knew this Marine…"

"Did the Marine shoot them?" Ronny asked eagerly, making Lex choke on his words.

"No! No, he didn't shoot them! He taught me how to fight."

"So you beat up all the bullies?"

"No, he taught me how to defend myself, so I wouldn't be beaten up anymore." Although he had practiced his newfound skills on a few of those bullies, in fact. One of them spent six weeks with a cast on his wrist because Lex broke his arm. That, however, he decided not to divulge. "I found out at a very early age that it's much easier to beat those bullies with words, rather than violence. After all, they hurt you because they think you're weaker than they are, right? So if you're able to defend yourself with words, find their weaknesses and exploit them, they'll leave you alone after a while."

"Do you mean blackmail?" Jessica asked. Lex didn't know whether he should be delighted or appalled with these kids' penchant for the criminal.

"N-no," he said, trying to hide a grin. "I just mean to take away your own weakness and reflect it back to them."

Questioning looks all around him.

"Okay," Lex began, searching for an illustrative example. "Say, you're bald. And this group of boys or girls," with a nod at Emmy and Tina, "is following you at the school yards and calling you…"

"Baldy!" the tiny child screamed. Lex smirked.

"Bullies are usually a little more inventive and more hurtful," he said. "Baldy's just a statement, there's no real insult, although I agree it's less than pleasant to be addressed as such. Come on, give me something I can work with."

There was a moment of silence. Then a boy called Zeke tentatively provided, "Eight ball."

"Common," said Lex, "but certainly not bad."

"Frog face!" squealed Ronny.

"Fish head!" cried another boy.

"Slippery serpent!"

"Naked garden slug!"

"Marble-head!"

"I've heard worse," Lex deadpanned.

"This is stupid," one of the older girls muttered, but when Lex raised his eyebrow at her she said, "Bald sea cucumber," with a certain relish.

They went on for another few minutes until their imagination had run dry and they sat panting, grinning and red, and Lex said, "You should remember this. All these words that you've just invented? If someone ever calls you one of those, they're completely unoriginal. You've already heard them before, and they can't hurt you. And if the guys who're bullying you happen to be fat, or ugly, or have drunk parents or mothers who cheat on their fathers well, then you know what to do, right?"

There was a guffaw of laughter from the door to Miss Decan's office. Lex, having forgot her completely, started, and looked back with a guilty expression. Valerie walked up to the throng, hugging the children that welcomed her with smiles and excitable chatter.

"I take it that wasn't very pedagogical of me, huh?" Lex said innocently.

"No," she giggled, "it wasn't. But I've decided to forgive you.

'Okay kids, Mister Luthor just got a call from David, so he's got to go."

"Noooo!" chorused the children. Lex marveled at the loyalty he had inspired in such a short time. He couldn't keep the blush and the grin off his face if someone had held a gun to his head.

"So," Valerie continued, ignoring the protests with professional ease, "say your goodbyes. And if you're very good, perhaps Mister Luthor might be persuaded to visit you again…?"

Clever woman. How could he refuse with all those little hands plucking at his lapels and all those voices clamoring for another visit.

"You can count on it," he said, and the children cheered. He had never, ever, felt so unconditionally adored in his life. It made him want to stay. It made him want to protect these kids from whatever would ever hurt them. It made him want to pay for every single cost they might run into. It made his eyes and throat burn, and when he walked away from them it was a little like an escape. He was painfully aware of the fact that his own father could never have felt about _him_ this way. If Lionel had, he wouldn't have tortured Lex the way he had. He'd never have Lucas live a life so far away from him. _God forbid,_ Lex thought, accepting the files from Miss Decan, _I ever have a son. How could I ever get anywhere in the world when I have a child to support, look after, and protect?_

He looked up to find Miss Decan still chuckling.

"It's nice to know that, pedagogically lacking though I am, I'm still good for a laugh or two," he drawled, trying to find his usual equilibrium. Valerie grinned.

"Yes, that was priceless. Very, very wrong, but highly amusing."

"Did David really call or were you just saving the precious souls of your kids?"

"No, he really called. He's finished the report you requested, the one with the additional side effects of heating sodium lithium boron silicate to 3000 degrees. Really, Mister Luthor, you shouldn't look at me like that. I may know nothing whatsoever about the meteor rocks, I'm still able to pronounce the scientific terms."

Lex unflexed his eyebrow. Suddenly, he would be more than happy to leave. He needed to think, and he very badly wanted a drink.

"Where is Reese? Twenty-sixth floor, as usual?"

"He should be here any moment," Miss Decan said. "Can I get you anything? A cup of coffee, perhaps?"

Lex declined, but let her lead him to the cafeteria nevertheless. During his talk with the children he'd completely forgotten to ask about the special powers some of them had developed. Even if he didn't want to come back simply to boost their spirits, which he did, he had to find out more about those powers. See how far they went. It wouldn't do to create another army of uncontrollable meteor freaks. Especially not children. Adults were hard enough to manage, but children, pre-adolescent, pre- or mid-puber children with hormones raging and bodies going out of control…well, he'd seen what happened in Smallville. It wouldn't do.

"Mister Luthor?"

"I'm sorry, were you saying anything?"

"I was just wondering…Will you come back for the children? They really enjoyed your little," she smiled, "heads-up."

Lex nodded. "Sure. Whenever I have the time, I'll come by and say hello. Ah, is that Reese?"

That had been two weeks ago. The end of November had come and gone, and now Santa loomed on the corner of every street like a fat mugger. Two of the children Lex had seen had died in the meantime, and three had been added to the program. Christmas carols and wet coughing sounded in the streets and Valerie Decan's beam was only at half-light. Lex donned his plastic coat with a strange sense of foreboding and smirked at the cap Reese offered him.

"Thank you, David, but I don't think that'll be necessary."

David tossed the cap back with a blush and a wry grin.

"Sorry."

"No harm done."

He put on the mandatory plastic foil-gloves, and entered the children's room.


	2. Chapter 2

Two: In which Chloe's poise is destroyed

"LEX!" a hoarse boy's voice yelled out as if he and Lex had gone to school together. Lex locked his knees and laughed as Ronny launched himself at him and hit Lex in the solar plexus. Lex had to catch him, or the boy would have glided off his belly and fallen to the floor like Tom from Jerry's window. "It's LEX!" the boy shouted, making sure that anyone who might have missed his previous exclamation (which could have been possible if that someone had been hiding in the toilet with his or her head stuffed into the bowl, underwater) was now aware of the new visitor. The other children were less loud, but wherever he looked, Lex saw smiling faces as he carried Ronny's squirming body back to the bed with the train track…which had grown. It now ran under three beds and bridged a pile of books.

"Hello Mister Luthor!" they piped up. "Hello Lex!"

"Hey, kids."

There was a Christmas tree in the play corner, filled with lights and shiny red and yellow balls—just like Lex had ordered. Some of the kids were wearing red hats with white fluff around the rim. Ronny too; when he caught Lex's eye he slowly and deliberately squeezed the pompon at its point and 'Jingle bells' wailed from the tiny chip inside. Lex managed not to wince. The hats had been Valerie Decan's idea. He thought they were horrible. The kids apparently loved them. At Ronny's example, at least twenty more versions of raped Christmas songs began to play.

"All right, all right!" Lex cried, deposited the boy on the bed and held up his hands in defense. "Spare me the music!"

"Don't you like 'Rudolf'?" asked Emmy. She, as well, was wearing a hat, but she had adorned it with little green and yellow feathers.

"I've always thought it was a pretty nasty song," Lex said. He sat down on a bed, starting when Tina immediately plunked down on his lap. Were children usually this…attached? Or had the flu deprived them of other visitors? He gently removed her from his knees and placed her next to him on the bed, where she hung against him, running her fingers over a slip of cashmere sweater peeking out from beneath his plastic coat.

"Nasty?" Emmy asked, frowning her pencil-drawn eyebrows. "Why'd you say that?"

"Well," Lex said, "It's always struck me as rather cruel that the other reindeer wouldn't let Rudolf play with them simply because he looked different. And that they only liked him when Santa—just as discriminatorily—chose him to draw his sleigh. I mean, what's so grand about servitude, even if it means you get to draw Santa Claus' sledge?"

Twenty-eight children blinked up at him.

Lex cleared his throat. "It somehow seems a little unfair," he finished lamely.

Jessica laughed. "You're so weird," she said. "You've got it all wrong. The song isn't about being left out because you're different at all, but being chosen because you're special. And when people realize that you're special, they'll accept you. I thought it was unfair too," she said soothingly, absolving Lex of his silly notions, "but mom explained it to me a few days ago. It's all about being special, not about being different."

"Amen," Lex muttered sarcastically, then hastily smiled to make sure he hadn't offended anyone. He hadn't. He briefly considered employing children as foremen and managers at LeXCorp; they didn't seem to take offense, were easy to please, loyal after but one little chat, and always saw the best in situations.

"Last year my dad brought home a deer," one of the Michaels mused aloud. "It wasn't all that big. I doubt it could draw a sleigh."

"Probably wasn't a reindeer," said Jack. He was still wearing a Scooby Doo t-shirt, but the dog was now wearing a shawl and a hat just like his own, and was being presented a gift by Shaggy. "Besides, it's drawn by, like, ten or twelve of them, so they wouldn't have to be that big."

"Do you want to see my log wagon?" Ronny asked Lex through the budding discussion concerning the size of reindeer. "Daddy gave it to me yesterday. And another five yards of track. He brings me a yard every time he comes to see me." He flashed a huge, gap-toothed smile filled with childish greed. "He's promised me a tunnel for Christmas. And a couple of people to ride the train. And my aunt's gonna give me another locomototive. So they can race against each other." He pointed at his newest addition. "All the logs come off, see. Like that." He plucked a log (which looked a lot like those little wooden pegs Lex had found after wrecking an Ikea bed in a cheap motel) from the wagon and put it on the track. His eyes widened. "Oh no!" he cried, "there's something on the rails! What if they next train doesn't know? They'll crash!"

_Clark Kent will save them_, Lex thought sourly, but he grinned and patted the little boy's shoulder. Without missing a beat, Ronny forgot all about his surroundings and dived into his own world, where a train wreck was sadly imminent.

"…that ain't deer, that's elks."

"What's an elk? I've never heard of an elk?"

The reindeer discussion was still going strong.

"An elk," a girl Lex couldn't remember seeing before explained, "is something like a moose. It's like a really big deer. You could ride on it. I saw it in Princess Mononoke."

"Well Santa's sleigh is drawn by reindeer, not elks or whatever they're called," Jack argued. "And it's Mononoke _Hime_, not Princess Mononoke. _Hime_ means Princess," he clarified for Lex's sake.

"Oh, screw your Japanese bullshit," one of the Michaels yelled, and before Lex could do anything they were rolling over the floor, fighting.

"Um," he started, then decided boys would be boys and searched out Jessica. She was leaning against the same bed he was sitting on and regarded the boys with amused disdain.

"You'd never say they were both dying four weeks ago, would you?" she said placidly. A little jolt went through Lex's body, and he stared at her, then at the boys, with wide eyes. _God_, he thought, _she's right. I actually forgot about that. They're sick. They don't act sick, but they are. Very, very sick._ Frowning slightly, he observed each of the kids sprawled all over the room. The last time he'd been here, they'd been pale, subdued—oh, they had participated with his little name-calling session, but they hadn't been this…high. Pale, they'd been. Thin. Vulnerable. Now, their cheeks were pink, and none of the kids were in bed. They were all running around or draped over chairs, crawling under the beds or playing.

"You're right," he said slowly. "You all seem to be doing a whole lot better. This treatment is working very well indeed."

She snorted. "It's not just the treatment."

"It isn't?" Lex asked.

Suddenly, her eyes were guarded.

"No," she said. And after a pause that was only a little too long she added with a too bright smile, "It's because of Christmas!"

_It won't be Christmas for another three weeks_, Lex thought to himself, but he smiled, hoping he'd fool her into believing he hadn't heard her slip up.

"A time of miracles huh?" he murmured. Jessica nodded. "Like your clairvoyance."

She stiffened, and he gently nudged her arm. "Don't worry, Miss Decan told me." Then, actually _registering_ the way she'd reacted, he asked, "Why'd you freeze like that?"

"Mom told me not to talk about it," she said shortly.

"Why not?"

She was silent for a while, but since it was a thinking silence rather than a stubborn-refusing-to-talk silence, Lex kept his mouth closed. Finally, she said, "Remember when I said that Rudolf was special and that he deserved to be chosen because of that?"

_Where on earth could the child be going?_

"Yeah?" Lex asked, suddenly uncertain.

"Do you think he showed his red nose to everybody thinking they'd find him special, or that he hid it as much as possible because some people wouldn't think him special at all, but a freak?"

Lex took a moment to digest what he thought she was saying.

"I thought," he said softly, "that your mom said that being special wasn't a bad thing."

"It doesn't need to be," she whispered back, way, way too seriously for a twelve-year-old, "as long as people realize you're special. But most people simply think you're a freak."

_Oh hell yeah_, Lex thought, _did you nail that one right through the balls_.

"I don't think you're a freak," he said. "My nose is pretty red as well, and so far very few people have made me the offer to draw their sleigh for them, if you get my drift."

Jessica got his drift. It hit her like an epiphany, just like it did the first time when he walked into this room populated by bald little kids: Lex was just as much a freak as they were. Just as much as Jessica.

"Do you want to see it?" she asked. Lex forcefully repressed his Freudian comment. He nodded. Jessica walked to a nightstand and picked up a packet of cards. She shuffled them and handed them to Lex.

"All of them?" he asked doubtfully. "Shouldn't I just pick one?"

"No," she said, her eyes no longer serious but twinkling with delight. "I've quite a bit more up my sleeve."

"Do you mind if I record this?" Chloe asked brightly, putting the already-running pocket recorder in the center of the table. It looked rather incongruous, lying there between the two coffee cups and next to the small vase with plastic flowers. However, she'd seen grown men recoil from that little machine as if it were a viper, and thrusting it into someone's face like this (or, technically, throw it onto the table) was as much as a verification of her informant's good will as she could possibly get.

The man on the other side of the table smiled thinly.

"Of course."

"Great." Chloe rewarded him with a 500 watt smile. She saved the 1000 watt version for special occasions, like when Clark saved hundreds of people from drowning and gave her the story, including pictures. Or when Jimmy brought her caffeine and muffins at midnight. Or when Lex casually forwarded her condemning evidence to destroy some ill-fated political or business opponent of his. Or when he made her spaghetti. She hastily pushed that particular image back into the dark, sweaty, panting recesses of her mind, upped her wattage a little and began: "Sooo, mister…Smith. I assume this is a…shall we call it a pseudonym?"

Mister Smith took a sip of his coffee and twitched his mouth again. He had thin lips he seemed inclined to press tightly together, which gave his otherwise handsome face a tight, hostile expression.

"What is it you wanted to discuss with me? You were very secretive about the subject on the telephone. And while I know I'm known to grasp at all kinds of straw other people wouldn't want to be caught dead touching, I am also a very busy woman. So, Mister Smith, if you'd care to begin…" She gestured towards the gently clicking recorder. "Why are we meeting here?"

'Here' being yet another seedy little café that served slop for coffee. The only reason people ever came here was to blow whistles, securely tucked away in the dark, stuffy booths that kept anyone else from overhearing the conversation. Any conversation. Any sound at all, for that matter. Chloe was quite certain that if she were to look under her bench she'd find a number of missing persons that had been shot in this very booth, hidden, and never discovered.

"I wanted to discuss the…practices…of LuthorCare."

Chloe heaved an inward sigh. Another Cradle Cancer fanatic. Why couldn't these people simply accept a kind gesture of a traumatized man and be happy? Still, she might as well make this worth her coffee and while.

"I assume you're talking about the cancer treatment?" she asked.

"Yes."

"What about it?"

Mister Smith leaned forward, steepling his fingers. His eyes were deep blue and dark with sincerity, but because of his very light blond lashes they looked naked. _Pig's eyes_, Chloe realized. Smith's eyes reminded her of Pinky's from the Jenkins farm.

"I know you must get thousands of phone calls by outraged people calling for Luthor blood for one reason or the other. Let me make one thing clear before I say anything else. I'm not just any man. I have good cause to be worried, and I have the evidence to back me up."

Chloe gave a little nod, urging him on.

"Let me put this simply, then. Lex Luthor, or rather, LuthorCare, is not gathering these children to treat them. He's collected them to experiment on them using the same material both LeXCorp and LuthorCorp have been condemned for in the past: a distilled form of the meteorite known to the public as _Smallville Green, Smallville Rock_ or simply _Meteorites_, and in science as _Sodium Lithium Boron Silicate_. Miss Sullivan, he's using these kids as lab rats, and the Metropolis people are cheering at his every move."

Chloe was silent. The Smallville part of her was huffing up to throw a major tantrum; it always took her a second to switch that part off and enter professional journalist mode.

_Be cool. Poised. Objective. __**Professional**_.

"These are serious allegations." Her voice was calm and just as neutral as she had planned it to be. If she'd allowed herself to feel anything at all at that moment, she'd have congratulated herself on an image well-shown.

"Yes," Smith agreed. "Very serious. Which is why I didn't want to make them without evidence." He reached into a soft leather briefcase lying next to him and pulled out a thick manila envelope. "I trust I can give these to you without having to fear they'll be lost or fall into the wrong hands…?" There was the faintest of threats in his voice, but as she gathered the envelope in her lap, Chloe shook her head sharply and replied in the same tone, "No. Can I be just as certain that this is, if not the only copy, at least the only copy of these files currently in the hands of the press?"

"You can be assured that it is." He closed the briefcase and began to slide out of the booth.

"Wait!" Chloe called, surprised. "Wait! Is this all?"

"For the moment? Yes. I'd like you to read what I just gave you. You'll find it…interesting, I'm sure." He stuck his legs out of the booth, and Chloe stomped Poised Professionalism a bloody nose. She grabbed his arm, pulled hard, and hissed, "I said, wait."

"Miss Sullivan, I can list the findings in those documents, but…"

"No."

When she said nothing Smith, sighing, sat back down on his bench and raised his eyebrows.

"Why me?"

"Excuse me?"

"Don't play with me, Mister Smith. If you want me to look into this, answer my question. Why did you choose me to expose this…whatever it is? There are hundreds of reporters who'd sell their souls to even be _able_ to get a lead to this story. If this is true, as you claim it is…and if you really have conclusive evidence, this is front page, major headlines news. You could have picked anyone from the Daily Planet. Floyd. Parker. Hell, you could have picked Lois Lane and they salivate over this fancy little envelope so much you could use it for _papier maché_—but you didn't. You picked me to sell your story to, and I want to know why."

Smith chuckled.

"You knew Lex Luthor when you were living in Smallville, didn't you?" he asked.

"Yes. And?"

"You more or less function as his regular press agent whenever he has to deal with the Daily Planet."

"I do not work for Lex Luthor," Chloe protested.

"I know," he said quickly. "I know that. But you deal with him more often, or at least more regularly than any of the others."

"If you say so."

"I do say so. Perhaps, there's even some sort of…friendship? A purely professional regard for one another?"

"I don't dislike Lex," said Chloe in a hard voice. She didn't like the way Smith was looking at her, as if she was the unwitting weapon he was going to use to commit mass murder—while everything was suggesting she had all the details right there in her grasp. "That doesn't mean that I'll spare him if he's breaking the law."

Smith slapped his flat hand on the table, making her jump. A vicious grin briefly widened his mouth, creating the most evil dimples she'd ever seen on a man.

"And that's why I chose you," he said.

_Chloe! I choose you!_

"You're right, when it comes to Lex Luthor, or any Luthor for that matter, the entire staff of the Daily Planet, and of every other newspaper in Metropolis, would gladly offer me their liver on a silver platter for the information you're crumpling in your hands right now." Chloe snatched her gripping fingers from the manila envelope. "They'd accept anything I told them and publish everything without so much as a single verification. While you, Miss Sullivan, you'd check. Because unlike you cousin," Chloe tightened her mouth, and he smirked, "you don't actually want to see this printed. And believe me or not, neither do I. I want you to doubt me. I want you to start your own investigation. I want you," his finger tapped the table right in front of her, "to prove me wrong. I'm going to give you everything to convince you that Luthor's a monster that's using innocent children to advance his own vile experiments—but I'm counting on you to give it _your_ everything to refute every single bit of information I put in your mailbox. Trust me, Miss Sullivan. I want this," his finger pricked at the envelope on her lap, "to be one big misunderstanding. I'd like to wake up later this week and look in the mirror and be able to call myself a misanthrope for believing that even a Luthor could ever commit the crimes I suspected him of. But…" and his finger jutted out again, "if I'm right, if this _is_ the truth, I want to see his face on every surface of this city, right under _your_ headline damning him for a criminal. Because if this _is_ legit, I want to see him hang, and then I want to see him _fall_." He paused, breathing just a little fast, and rubbed his mouth with his knuckles.

Chloe realized she was sitting with her back pressed against the back of her seat and forced herself to relax. For some reason her heart was beating a salsa in her throat. She didn't think she'd ever heard anyone begging her to prove him wrong with such hatred in his voice.

"That is why," Smith resumed, much calmer now, almost pleasantly, "I decided to approach you instead of the big hotshot reporters of the Daily Planet. Because I believe you will do whatever it takes to dig up the truth, and because I'm willing to put the truth into your hands. Tell me, Miss Sullivan, did I come to the right woman?"

Chloe nodded; everything to keep that finger away from her. Smith smiled.

"Then I believe I have answered your question. Now, if you don't mind, I have an appointment at four. If you need to contact me, please use the email address we used before. I usually check it in the morning before nine and in the evening after ten." He sat back, giving her a second to ask any remaining questions—he'd taken over control just like that, Chloe realized with outrage. Determined to win at least a little of it back she leaned forward.

"Just one more thing, then, Mister Smith. What made you come to the conclusion that L-Luthor was experimenting on those kids? Why'd you start looking in the first place?"

"That's easy," he said, voice hard. "I knew one of the kids that died. Good afternoon, Miss Sullivan. I hope to hear from you soon."

With that, he slid out of the booth, dragged his little briefcase after him, and walked out of Chloe's line of sight.

After the third card, Lex's fingers trembled a little. After fourteen, he had trouble closing his mouth. After twenty, he didn't even check the cards anymore but kept his eyes on the girl perched on the edge of the bed in front of him. Jessica had predicted the face of every card he had drawn, and each and every one had been correct.

"Jack of spades. Two of hearts. Four of hearts. Queen of diamonds. Six of hearts. Eight of clubs. Ten of clubs. Five of clubs, I should have shuffled them better. Ace."

"Which one?"

"Spades. We've already had the other three, right?"

"Right." He must be a little stunned not to remember that. _Huh. Call that maced, shot with tranquillizers AND _tazers_, clubbed in the head and mauled by a bear. _The kid was amazing. She was better than any magician he'd ever seen, because this was no trick, this was _real_. Lex stared at her, temporarily rendered speechless by his own delight. His mind was racing while she kept naming his cards as they pattered down on the duvet.

_Imagine being able to do this! To predict cards—god, I have to get her to Vegas! She'd make a million—billions! Sybil in cards. Did my blood do this to her, or was it another factor? If so, could I bottle it? _

"And the last three are the Jack of hearts, the seven of clubs, and the seven of spades." She grinned. "Cool, huh?"

"Cool?" He put his hands on her red cheeks. "It's amazing! Does it also work with… Memory? Dies? If I'd cast a die, would you know what'd come up?"

"Yeah. Just like lottery and stuff."

"What about conversations?" Lex asked. Tina had by now stroked a hole into his sweater, trains had crashed, and reindeer had been judged redundant, but he had forgotten all about the other children. "Do you know what people are going to say before they actually say it?"

Jessica shook her head. "Not always. Sometimes I kind of think I know what they're going to say, but it's not always right." She sighed. "I guess people change their mind before they say something. Or maybe they're lying, I don't know. Sometimes I just know they're lying, when they say something completely different than they were going to."

_FUTURE LAWYER ALERT!!!_ For a second, Lex didn't know whether to snatch the girl up and put her in a little room to study, or to run away and keep her away from his brain. Then reality reasserted itself. She couldn't read his mind; she could, maybe, detect lies because she saw snapshots of the immediate future. Her gift wasn't tied to white suits and black gloves, atomic bombs and rains of blood. She wasn't his to study; she was a girl with cancer and he should be ashamed to even _think_ about exploiting her. Lex mentally chastened himself, but immediately forgave himself as well. He was a Luthor, after all. He was entitled to have thoughts like that, as long as he reigned himself in before he followed them up.

"Are you doing that card trick again?" Emmy said in a little whiny voice. "It's sooo boring. I can't believe you'd rather have that than your—"

"Ssh!" Jessica hissed with such vehemence that Emmy had to blink spit from her eyes.

"What?" asked Lex, but the girl, cowed, just shook her head and rubbed her fingers over her scalp.

"How long's it take for your hair to grow back anyway?" she asked, replacing her hat.

"I really wouldn't know, s…hon…" He floundered, regarded himself with amazement. _How interesting. I can't get the endearment out of my mouth. I can say 'love' and 'darling' to any woman I want to fuck, but I can't say anything nice to a nine year old girl. _ "Emmy," he finished, stroking her neck. Children had such thin, delicate necks, and without hair they seemed even more fragile. She stared at his head, blushed, and muttered, "Oh. Um. Sorry." Then her face lit up with the widest smile he'd seen on her yet, and she said, "But you haven't met Amy yet!"

"Emmy!" Jessica spat, but the smaller girl stuck out her pointed little chin, took Lex's hand and said, "He's one of us. If Amy can help him, he's got the right to see her, too."

"Help me?" Lex asked. He very carefully extracted himself from Tina's octopus-like grasp. She made a small protesting sound, then settled back and closed her eyes. While her brother, now no longer fighting, was still playing with the other kids, Tina was clearly exhausted. Lex patted her back before Emmy dragged him away to the play corner, and resolved to buy her a cashmere sweater or shawl for Christmas. "What do you mean, help me?"

Emmy giggled. "You'll see!"

Lex could not remember seeing Amy before. Either she was one of the three new children, or he had forgotten her face. She must be new, then. He never forgot a face, not even a child's face, and he most certainly wouldn't have forgotten a girl's with eyes like hers. Somewhere in her recent ancestry she must have Chinese blood; her nose was somewhat flat, and her skin had that faint yellowish tan, but Western blood had done something spectacular with her genes and blessed her with the most amazing, golden-green-blue eyes. She was perhaps ten years old, face still rounded with the last traces of baby fat that the cancer hadn't eaten away, and her ears stuck out ludicrously under the Christmas hat, but when looked up from what she was doing and beheld Lex with those gems of eyes, he felt as if he'd been pinned down like a butterfly.

"Hey Amy, this is Lex. Lex, this is Amy. Amy, he's one of us."

"I see," Amy said. She held out her hand. "Hello, Lex Luthor."

His hand completely enveloped hers, and for one second it was as if he could crush it simply by closing his fingers, her bones fragile as glass, her flesh soft as paper tissue. Then the feeling passed, he released her hand and she smiled slightly, her eyes cast down.

_What just happened?_

Emmy as well was smiling that mysterious little smile, but when she caught him staring, it widened to a wholly innocent, ordinary grin, and she gestured towards the little clay animals Amy was making.

"Look! We're making animals for the nativity scene."

Lex took in the multitudes of animals littering the table. There were four (only slightly mutated-looking) cows, two donkeys, at least ten sheep, at least fifteen small pellets with tiny ears that he assumed were guinea pigs, seven rabbits, five dogs (or maybe those were rabbits too, he couldn't be sure), and another number of creatures he couldn't for the world identify.

"Wow," he drawled. "That's going to be one crowded barn."

"We're kind of counting on Ronny's dad to buy him a tunnel for his train," Amy said. She bit a cocktail pin in two and inserted both ends into a piece of clay, finishing another donkey. "So we can use the box it comes in to store the animals. Otherwise we'll just have to find another spot for the three wise men."

"They'd probably rather be in a bar anyway," Lex mused. To his surprise, Amy burst out laughing.

"That's what my dad always says," she grinned. He grinned back at her.

"But their camels can stay," Emmy decided. "If they aren't stuck to their owners. That'd suck. I'll have to check."

"And I have to go," Lex realized. He checked his watch; it was almost four thirty. He had a meeting in half an hour and one of those horrible but unfortunately unskippable pre-Christmas dinks at eight. Who could have known he'd enjoy talking to children so much? _Who knows, _Lex thought while he waved and occasionally hugged the children goodbye, _if my aspirations all were to come crashing down, I could always try and make a career as a teacher._

"Will you be back?" Jessica asked just before he opened the door to the 'lock chamber'.

"I'll definitely try." Oh yes, he would be back. He wanted to explore that lovely gift of hers, and he wanted to know the reason behind Amy's Mona Lisa smile.

"Before Christmas?"

"If I can, yes."

Hell, he'd celebrate Christmas _with_ them, if he had half the chance. But that was probably out of the question. Most likely their parents would come and celebrate it with them, and he wasn't sure he'd care to include the parents in his Christmas. It was alright to get tipsy with a load of the rich, empty, glittery Metropolitan upper crust and find one of them still dead drunk in his bed; he was less eager to spend such a night with emotional people whose children might die before the end of the year. And while waking up with Miss Decan plastered all over him wasn't such a bad idea, the thought that it might be a woman like Cory Dean's mother made him gag.

No. Christmas at LutherCare was not an option. Ah well, he had at least half a dozen invitations stashed away in a drawer somewhere. If he chose wisely, he might even be able to run clear of his father this year. Now that would be a lovely Christmas gift.

With a last wave, he left the children's room, took off his protective clothes and chatted with the staff for a few minutes. But Reese had returned to the 26th floor and he hardly knew the doctors of the 23rd—and he was pressed for time anyway. As he left, he checked his phone and found that he had five missed calls. One was from Lionel; Lex decided to keep him waiting until after his meeting. One was from Henry Tippitt, one of his private eyes; Tippitt was currently following someone Lex suspected of murdering one of Lex's business associates. He was just checking in, as he was told to do. The other three calls had been Chloe. She had hung up twice before the voicemail could kick in, but at the last call she'd left a short message.

"Lex. I need to talk to you. Call me."

"I am not your lapdog, Miss Sullivan," Lex muttered under his breath. He checked his watch; he'd have to hurry to get to the meeting in time. Flipping his phone closed, he stuffed it back into his pocket and hurried to the towering building of LuthorCorp Metropolis.


	3. Chapter 3

Hello people! Thanks for all the reviews, because of all the posting problems I had last time with chapter 2 I completely forgot, but secretly I'm an enormous review whore so…thanks!!

Somethingeasy, you're my hero. Apart from satisfying my whoring, you also keep reminding me of little plot things I thought I'd covered but had actually kind of skipped or completely forgotten. Thanks again for the huge reviews, besides making me squee it actually makes me write better.

Before posting the next chapter I should probably say that while I am torturing these characters, I will deliver them back in their original, relatively good, more or less pre-season 5-but-two-years-later state : ) Just so you know. I have plotty reasons to do what I'm doing to Lex.

Three: In which Lex decides being a freak had its advantages 

"He wouldn't do it." Chloe threw down the stack of paper down on the table, moved like Clark to save her coffee cup, and carried said cup to the kitchen, although she was dangerously close to a caffeine overdose. "He wouldn't experiment on children. He just wouldn't."

Her hand trembled as she poured the last dregs of coffee out of the pot (no Senseo or Nespresso machines for Chloe Sullivan. She'd already outworn the one on her floor at the Daily Planet. Especially for her, her floor had invested in a two-liter pot with thermos-layer. She usually finished it within three hours after arrival.), but she honestly couldn't say whether it was because of the Java, a near sleepless night, or her level of distress.

"Lex wouldn't do such a thing, not with children."

But the reason she was so upset was that he totally would.

She knew Lex, she knew how his brain worked. He was a nice enough guy. Very loyal to his friends. Very protective of his employees. Obsessively determined to Help The World—even if it was only because he wanted to leave his mark on history and it was the wrong age to be a Caesar in America. She knew out of first hand experience that Lex was capable of astonishing tenderness, had a great sense of humor, and would forgive the greatest crime if the apology was sincere. She had both hated and loved him at times, and she had been baffled by how incredibly _smart_ he was. He was a fucking genius. Both when it came to business and when it came to making pasta.

But he _would_ experiment on people. He'd done so before. If he was intrigued by something, or if he couldn't explain a phenomenon, he would not rest until he had an explanation.

See Clark Kent. One of the reasons why she'd sometimes hated Lex.

Walking jerkily back to her table, Chloe looked down on the list with numbers and descriptions—it looked so harmless. It might have been an information leaflet for a painkiller.

35-C-M-1999. Ct4-K: no effect. rising WBC. Growth.  Ct4-L.

36-C-F-1997. Ct4-K: falling WBC. Diminishing.

37-N-M-2000. Ct4-K: falling WBC. Diminishing.

38-N-F-2002. Ct4-K: falling WBC. Diminishing.

39-C-F-1991. Ct4-K: no effect. rising WBC. Growth.  Ct4-L.

It went on like that for a few pages. The Ct4-letter combinations changed every few lines, and also the effects. Then there were entries describing all kinds of horrible side effects, far more detailed than just falling WBC or rising WBC. WBC stood for White Blood Count, Chloe knew. She had also read up on White Blood Cells, and found out that the number of those cells was strongly connected to the presence of cancer.

Then there were other pages, and notes Mister Smith had stuck to them.

_SLBS stands for Meteor, our beloved Smallville Green. Note how it is used in all medicines given to the children. _

Chloe was no scientist, but all the notes served to create a picture she really didn't want to see.

_See here how the subjects are exposed to other diseases, and treated with SLBS-based concoctions._

She flipped through the pages, her heart beating faster and faster, her eyes burning. Horrible projects had risen from the various levels of LuthorCorp, projects that had destroyed people's lives and endangered the environment—but that had been LuthorCorp. So far, LeXCorp had been cleared of all such charges. Chloe knew. She had been one of the people that had helped clear them.

She knew Lex was lying when he maintained LeXCorp did not have a Level 3, or Level 33.1. As of yet she hadn't been able to find out where it was situated, but that it existed was fact.

But this… 

Smith's final note was stuck to a list of last names behind each was printed 'deceased'. It read: _My opinion is that LuthorCorp or LeXCorp first introduced this cancer to the population and are now using it to test their own treatments._

"It can't be real. You wouldn't do this, not when it concerns children with cancer." She took a sip and winced at the truly vile coffee. "Damn it! Answer your bloody phone!"

She needed to speak to him, make him explain. He could lie better than anyone she knew, but she would know it if he were hiding something. And she owed him at least one chance to explain. It wouldn't be the first time a misunderstanding had demonized Lex Luthor—and, as she had already admitted, she was no scientist or doctor. Smith's useful notes made his documents easier to understand, but, as General Lane was wont to say, 'an erroneous key can turn an innocent Christmas greeting into a terrorist attack.'

She had a number of useful associates working at Caine Chemistry that would probably be willing to help her in exchange for an IOU; before she blindly accepted Smith's evidence, she'd run it through Jane Metlock. See what Janey came up with.

And she needed to talk to Lex. Now. Glancing at the clock, she saw that it was near nine. Saturday, nine o' clock.

"You should've called me back yesterday, Lex," she muttered vengefully, and started jabbing his number on her phone.

Lex was rudely roused from near torpor by a far-away but very insistent ringing. He moaned and burrowed deeper under his sheets, unwilling to wake up all the way.

_Rasp_.

The ringing followed him under the duvet, dragging his consciousness out of Morpheus' arms.

"For God's sake…" Lex groaned, covering his left ear with one hand and pressing the other ear against the mattress…

And then he had exactly two seconds to realize that:

his fingers and the palm of his hand met _stubble_

his head really hurt

he was going to chuck up in bed if he did not run to the bathroom RIGHT AWAY

before his stomach heaved and all conscious thought dissipated in a rush of running feet to reach the toilet in time.

Lex Luthor had, after the unfortunate incident with the meteors, thrown up five times in his entire post-the-age-of-nine life. Apart from that one time when he was nineteen and someone had tried to poison him (and that had been spectacular. Literally _every_ body cavity had started spewing whatever fluid it could. He'd been hurling out of his goddamn _eye sockets_ at the time), those other four times had been from nerves. Ah, the joys of trying to live up to the expectations of Lionel Luthor.

_So,_ Lex thought through the pounding ache in his head as he watched the contents of his stomach swirl down the drain, _what's this? Another attempt at my life?_ He didn't feel quite bad enough to warrant that.

A hangover, then? He didn't get hangovers. Hell, he couldn't get _drunk_ unless he really, really tried, and yesterday he had barely made an effort. How much Champagne had he had, anyway? Five glasses? Six? Seven? A few glasses of brandy when he returned to the penthouse—alone, thank god for that, now!—while he worked on a plan for a plant in China and checked his mail. Yes, he'd been pretty woozy when he went to bed, but he'd chalked that up to exhaustion. After all, he'd been a busy little billionaire over the last couple of days.

"Maybe I overdid it," he thought to himself as he rinsed his mouth (bitterly lamenting the absence of Nan Ty in his bathroom and the lack of servants to fetch him one). "Maybe I work too hard."

He scrubbed his face with wet hands—and froze. Remembered the rasping sound when he'd turned on the pillow. Opened his eyes and blinked against the ghost he saw in the mirror.

He hadn't turned on the light, but in the muted morning light he could see well enough. Skin white like fresh milk—which looked a hell of a lot less sexy than it sounded. Blood-shot eyes. Dark shadows under those eyes, making him look strangely frail. And a faint red fuzz covering his scalp, and a sparse growth of beard along his jaws, chin and upper lip. He. Had. Hair. Well, stubble.

_Well,_ his subconscious caustically observed, _one thing's for sure: you'll never have a beard like Dad's._

The rest of his brain had more or less short-circuited, battered as it was by this early morning spewing. He desperately tried to kick-start it into gear, but the only thoughts that came out of it were meaningless and stupid, like: _This is wrong. This is wrong! I look ridiculous! Why the hell do I have hair?_

His hand grasped blindly for a razor, some sort of inbred male response to finding stubble on his chin, Lex supposed, but of course he had no razors. Why should he? He'd never used one in his life. Somehow, his shell-shocked mind presented him with a memory of Victoria Hardwick after two bottles of Chablis, ten Belgian chocolates and two lines of coke.

_Victoria, just turned twenty-one. _

_Lex, one month short of nineteen. _

_She'd just licked him from crotch to chin and said, "Lex, darling, I don't know what other women may have told you, but I just love the way you're smoother than me." (Victoria was the kind of woman who shaved her pubic hair into heart shapes). "It makes me feel so delightfully debauched."_

"_Really?" Lex, who had never heard the word 'debauched' actually used in pre-sex conversation, had asked, suddenly self-conscious. "How so?" _

"_Because…" she rubbed her chin along his cheek, humming, then down his neck, his chest, belly, and finally rested her chin on his left hipbone. Her fingers drew tickling circles around his sex. "it's like fucking a bloody baby. I mean, think of it. Technique of a porn star, enthusiasm of a teenager, body of a man, and skin like my infant cousin. It's such a turn-on."_

"_Are you being sarcastic?" he had asked. Some earlier experiences had made him sensitive to remarks about his lack of body hair, even though he ego had grown enough not to be hurt by it anymore. She had taken his hand and pressed his fingers between her legs._

"Darling, does this feel like sarcasm?" 

Precisely that was how he could stand to sleep with Victoria, though he hadn't seen her since the take-over. She was a back-stabbing bitch but she was a wonderful shack. Who'd found pleasure in Lex's Rex cat appearance.

He stared at the sallow face in the mirror, so pale his bloody freckles were showing. "Well," he murmured, and ran his hands over his arms. Tiny hairs bristled against his palms. "This is…unexpected."

Looking down, he touched his chest. Still hairless. Belly too. Down…

"Christ, get a grip," he snarled at himself, and despite his headache Lex flipped the light switch, dropped his boxers and set to self-exploring.

Half an hour later he was deeply grateful for not having any house staff in his metropolis penthouse. Yes, he'd been forced to make his own coffee but that was all right; he could still press a button when he needed to. Besides, the coffee made him gag, and he'd poured it in the sink after one sip. Now he had his hands curled around a glass of Whiskey, and felt marginally better. No one should see him this way, curled up on the couch like a wounded little bird (_make that wounded little red __**hedgehog**_, his cruel subconscious mocked), feeling so perplexed, unsettled and hung over.

He had not sprouted huge amounts of healthy adult hair over the night, but Victoria _could_ kiss her debauchery goodbye. No more baby. He was more like a twelve-year-old at the moment. Or maybe a sixteen-year-old. He really wouldn't know. According to his memories boys started to grow hair on their chests at the age of ten, but he suspected that might be the result of traumatic envy.

The thing was, he had the nagging feeling that he was supposed to be happy. If this had happened fifteen years ago, Lex couldn't have been more overjoyed. As a boy he had suffered under the perpetual condescension and discrimination of his peers and teachers…and, of course, his father's, although Lionel had always told him that no matter what he looked like, Lex would always be his son and Lionel would always be proud of his son.

Lex had always thought Lionel had strange ways to show his affection.

It was only when teenage insecurity changed into teenage rebellion that young Alexander decided that his baldness wasn't something he should be ashamed of. Apparently his appearance identified him. If people chose not to see the brilliance hidden behind his unusual facade, fine, then he'd make that most obvious, scorned feature the very thing that represented everything he stood for.

And so the little bald boy became Lex Luthor, who just happened to be smooth. Lex Luthor, who, despite his then-skinny fame, could knock any bully's teeth straight through his throat into his stomach. On brains grows no hair. Lex outsmarted his entire class, personally beat up anyone who tried to make fun of him, and bought everyone else. He had few real friends and many enemies, but they were powerless against Luthor power. _Lex_ Luthor power. Lionel's influence had nothing to do with it.

From that moment on, people seemed to forget he looked in any way different from them (or at least they didn't mention it anymore), and by the time he was eighteen, Lex was as comfortable with himself as he was ever likely to get. When 'bald' became 'skinhead' and he was threatened to be harassed for an entirely different reason he laughed, long and loud, and drank his Club Zero friends under the table.

He was happy the way he was. He _liked_ the way he was. It defined him, and made him strong.

Maybe he was a bit crazy.

Because he should be dancing around the room and caressing the tiny short hairs on his skull, but all he wanted to do was get a Gilette and make them disappear again.

No. There was something he wanted more. He wanted this headache to go away.

The ringing of his mobile startled him so badly he dropped his glass and choked on the mouthful he was drinking. Coughing hurt his poor head so much he ignored the phone for a moment, but after ten rings he remembered that he'd programmed it not to switch to voicemail the evening before, and this caller was nothing if not persistent. He found his phone in his dress jacket over the chair, flipped it open and snarled "What!?" without checking the caller ID. If it was Lionel, he'd fire him.

There was a short silence, and he almost hung up again, then a hesitant voice said, "Lex?"

"Chloe?" Fuck. He'd forgotten to call her back.

"Yeah. Umm…are you with someone?"

He barked a laugh, coughed again and pinched the bridge of his nose. The Whiskey was doing its damnedest best to crawl back up his throat.

"No, Chloe, I'm all by myself. Is something wrong?"

"No. No, it's…Yes." She sighed. Lex sighed as well. "I need to speak to you."

"You are speaking to me."

"I need to see you while I'm speaking to you."

He groaned. "Can't this wait? I'm kind of…" _Hairy situation, dear_. "busy."

"No," Chloe said firmly in her reporter voice, "This can't wait. I need to see you as soon as possible. And we can't be seen together."

Lex let his head drop back on the couch, raising it with a jerk when his new stubble made a soft scratching sound on the leather.

"Can't you just accuse me over the phone? Then I can just tell you I didn't do it and you can send the asshole who's providing you with his so called evidence a message that he can go and wipe his ass with it."

Silence. Then, "I don't want to accuse you of anything." She sounded guilty. So someone _was_ giving her material that could ruin another perfectly legal business deal. Lex closed his eyes, feeling tired beyond belief. "I just want to talk to you. Now."

"All right." No sense in delaying the inevitable. He wondered what it was he had supposedly done this time. "All right, Chloe. What about the Ritz floor 73 conference room? Nobody ever…"

"No go, Lex," she interrupted him. "They won't let me enter the Ritz anymore, remember? After I followed that State Senator inside and caught him sleeping with his secretary and caused that little…um…accident in the kitchen, they won't let me in anymore."

Lex smiled. "Right," he drawled, "I forgot. So…why don't you come up to the penthouse? Or," he went on when he heard her inhale, "we could talk in the Lobby downstairs. It has nice, dark corners and great coffee." He fought the urge to retch at the thought of coffee. "If you want I can wear a hat and a ski mask. If you put on your black wig and those fancy high boots I'm sure no one will recognize us."

"There's no need to be cynical," Chloe pouted.

"Chloe, it's a quarter past nine and I had a really rough night. If you want to pull a Clark on me, as I expect, I am entitled to be cynical. Oh, and if you're going to shout at me I suggest you do in the penthouse, so at least no other people will be bothered by it. Besides, I prefer to have accusations thrown into my face in my own house. Habit, you know."

"I told you, I'm not accusing you of anything. And I'd rather meet in the Lobby."

"Whatever."

"So, you'll be there? Say in half an hour?"

Half an hour. Chloe was not like ordinary women. Maybe she was an alien as well. Every other woman he ever dated needed at least an hour to get ready to brave the streets, sometimes two.

"Make it an hour and I'll be there."

"Wow," she teased. It sounded slightly strained, but it was definitely teasing. "That must've been a night to remember! Should I bring my notepad?"

"No," he said curtly. "Bye Chloe."

"Bye Lex."

He slapped the phone closed and tossed it onto a chair. Now he was no longer talking his mind shut off again; instead of come-backs to any possible accusation he only drew blanks. It was as if his brains had been replaced by acid pudding. He rubbed his eyes, wincing when he touched the beginnings of side burns with his thumbs.

"Don't be an idiot," he mumbled, then reached for the phone again and called the security desk downstairs. "Victor? Yes. I'd like you to get me a couple of things. One is a packet of painkillers. What? I don't know, aspirin? And a razor. Yes, a razor. What? Oh, no, I don't; yes, bring the cream as well. Thanks."

Chloe was very conscious of the sound of her boots clicking on the floor as she searched out a table on the far end of Lex's penthouse lobby. He'd been right, it was pretty dark—expensively dark—with the curtains half-drawn, black leather chairs that probably cost as much as her entire flat, black marble floors and ebony tables. Tiffany lamps cast a cheerful but subdued light over orchids and other tropical plants, and the few people scattered here and there spoke in murmurs and whispers.

She looked around. Lex wasn't here yet, unless he'd really disguised himself. She herself had done up her hair and put on a short skirt and the boots Lex had mentioned; now she felt silly for dressing up. She hastily took a seat in a dark corner, was half frightened to death by a straying waiter with felt-soled slippers and ordered a double cappuccino. Without Lex's calming influence, places like these made her feel terribly self-conscious. Then again, she'd never looked out of place in Smallville, and Lex definitely had. Even Metropolis-bred came in different gradations, apparently.

Her coffee arrived but Lex didn't, and she nervously played with the wrapping of her cookie. He'd been unusually short on the phone. Maybe she _had_ disturbed him while he was with another woman. But no, he'd have said so. For all his secrets, he was usually very honest when asked directly—which was why she wanted to ask him about Smith's experiment theory face to face.

"Chloe?"

"Eep!"

Lex sat down across from her, smirking a little. She pressed her hand to her chest.

"Jesus Christ, Lex, how do you people manage to walk so softly on this floor? Are you wearing socks or something?"

"Gucci Soft Soles. Especially made to sneak up on employees and other unsuspecting individuals. I'm sorry I'm late." He offered no explanation, but the harsh note in his voice was gone and his face was neutral as usual, his natural cat-smile faint but visibly present. Chloe breathed a sigh of relief.

"So," Lex continued. "What is it you wanted to see me about?"

"You don't want any coffee?"

"No. Tell me what's so urgent it couldn't wait until a more humane hour."

_Civility: restored. Mood: still bad._

She took a deep breath. "Yesterday I was called by a man who called himself Smith."

"How trust-inspiring," Lex sneered. "Do go on."

Chloe inwardly rolled her eyes but continued, "We met. He told me in no uncertain terms that he believed that LuthorCare was experimenting on the Cradle Cancer kids. With Smallville Rock."

Lex was less surprised than she'd expected. He just nodded.

"Lex!"

"What do you want me to say, Chloe? That's exactly what we're doing."

"What?!"

"Chloe, what on earth do you think they're doing at LuthorCare? Of course we're experimenting with different treatments! It isn't as if we'd ever seen anything like this cancer before. The parents know this, they've given permission to use all our tests result on their children. All the treatments are experimental—there's nothing else!"

"But the meteorite…"

"I _know_!" he snapped. "It's great to create dual personalities and homicidal loonies, not to mention poison-resistant plants and potatoes that grow in the Sahara but taste like clay, but doesn't look so hot in the combination with sick children. But ever since I was exposed to the meteorites I haven't spent a night in the hospital—apart from when people decided to shoot me down or toss me around the room and hit me a concussion, of course."

He smiled a tight little smile, and suddenly Chloe got the feeling that something was off about him. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but Lex was definitely less in control than usual. She made an inquiring sound, hoping he'd go on. He did, speaking softly but with emphasis.

"What LuthorCare is doing, what they're focusing on, is that part of the meteorites that altered my healing factor. They've been trying to reproduce and advance that characteristic, and combine it with radiation therapy."

He leaned forward a little, his chin supported on his fingers, and regarded her with eyes that suddenly reminded her uncomfortably of Smith. Same coldness. Same repressed anger. Chloe hid behind her cappuccino cup.

"This," he said, "is, of course, classified information. The reason why we don't inform the public about the use of meteor rocks is precisely because of your reaction. We'd have needed to do so many tests and pass so many security protocols before we could even get started with the treatment that all these kids would have died before we could open our doors."

He sat back, smiling the dangerous little lazy smile she'd learned to be afraid of, and drawled, "How'd you get it?"

Chloe put down her cup down. "Lex, you can't expect me to expose my informants. I'd never ask you to do that either."

"Fair enough. You have chocolate on your nose."

She blushed, frantically wiped at the bridge of her nose. "Don't try to change the subject!"

"I'm not changing the subject. But I can hardly let you sit here in your kinky boots with a brown smudge on your nose, can I now?"

"You are most kind and considerate, oh Mister Luthor," Chloe said, piqued, though secretly pleased he'd noticed the boots. They _were_ kind of kinky, with knee-cuffs that reached up to her thighs if she flipped them up, and impressive stiletto heels. Hardly the kind of boots a truly sophisticated woman would wear, now that she thought of it. Hardly the kind of boots any woman who wanted to enjoy the act of walking would wear. Yet another reason not to go shopping with Lana.

_Sober up, Sullivan!_, she reprimanded herself. _Don't let him get to you with that remark._ She put her hands flat on the table, palm down, and retaliated.

"Smith also claimed you're infecting them with other diseases in order to see what effects the meteor treatment has on those diseases." The moment the words had left her mouth, she knew how ludicrous they were, and how hurtful.

Lex's mouth thinned to a white, straight line, not at all like his ordinary flippant expression when accused of some crime or another, and while his voice was still calm it was flat with fury.

"I am not even going to answer that," he said, and then immediately hissed, losing his cool entirely, "I can't believe you actually dare to say that to my face! Do you really believe that? Do you really think I'd ever do such a thing? You, of all people?"

"No, I don't," Chloe tried to say. "I'm sorry, I just…"

But he just talked over her apology, growing not red but whiter with each word.

"This is cancer, Chloe! You might recall I lost my mother to this disease. I don't play around with cancer, and I most certainly don't play with the lives of children with cancer! For God's sake, I visited these kids! I could never…" He suddenly stopped.

"Lex, I'm sorry!" Chloe said hastily, thinking he'd given her an opportunity to say something, but she realized that he hadn't even heard her when he said,

"Amy."

"What?"

And just as suddenly he wasn't mad anymore. "Amy," he repeated. "I can't believe I didn't…My brain doesn't work this morning," he told her.

It was strange to hear him say anything like that. Chloe's brain wasn't unknown to be on strike from time to time, and so was anyone else's she knew, but Lex's brain was one of the few things that so far had _never_ let him down, and she had to stomp on the '_Uhuh, Lex, I'm sure it does, you just need to feed it some Java'_ that threatened to fall from her tongue.

"It was her. She did something—so that's what she meant with 'helping me'."

"Um, Lex," she asked. His eyes snapped back to her face. "Time out. What are you talking about?"

"Meteor freakage," he mumbled, and pushed his chair away from the table. "I need to go."

She grabbed his arm—it was becoming a habit. "No you don't! You need to convince me that LuthorCare isn't experimenting on children."

He stared at her, mute with disbelief.

"Ok," she amended, releasing his arm, "you don't, because that little passion play would've convinced Mrs. MacKay, but…"

"Mrs. MacKay?" Lex asked, mystified, just as Chloe ended, "I need to know what the hell you're talking about. You've _visited_ those kids?"

"Mrs. MacKay?" Lex repeated.

"My old drama teacher," Chloe clarified. "She wasn't a freak, didn't have a crime record, and moved to Metropolis a year after you joined us in Smallville. You wouldn't have heard of her. Doesn't matter. You visited the cancer babies?"

"I really dislike…"

"Sorry!" She flapped her hands. "You did, though?" Somehow, the thought of Lex looking up little bald babies was just…wrong. She couldn't get the lab coat, the teddy bear with a huge red bow tie, and the fruit basket out of her mind.

He sighed. "Yes. This woman, their councilor, Valerie Decan, thought it might be a good idea to have a chat with them. Since," his sarcastic drawl was firmly back in place, "my stunning health is unfortunately tied to the utter and total absence of hair, and the kids, though alive, were feeling a little down, I decided to cheer them up a bit."

Chloe shook her head, wishing her imagination was less lively. The mental picture of Lex with a clown's nose was _really_ disturbing. The mental picture of _Lex visiting small children_ was disturbing! She could just see him with a child on each knee, convincing them of his view of the world, explaining things with that smooth, reasonable voice of his, clarifying how great leaders had always managed to leave their mark on history by sacrificing the few for the sake of many. He'd corrupt them so totally within the space of an hour that even their own parents wouldn't recognize them.

"What? I did!" Lex maintained, misunderstanding her head-shake.

"_O_kay."

"I did!"

"If you say so, Lex, I believe you. I mean, who wouldn't believe that the head honcho of the biggest corporation for states around wouldn't love to spend some quality time with a bunch of sick children?"

Lex rubbed his forehead, sighing. The gesture was odd for him, like the fact that he'd been late and had lost his temper. Again, she couldn't escape the feeling that he was…unbalanced, somehow. She decided to cut him some slack—also because sympathy might actually get him to tell who this Amy was, and what she'd done to him.

"Relax, Lex, I'm just winding you up. You talked to those children. How are they?"

"Small, helpless and bald," he said. "And," a faint smile, "they're tough and spirited, very generous and better company than I've had in a long time."

She had exactly one second to gawk at the tender curve of his mouth before it turned hard again, and he said, "What do you think, Chloe? Am I a repressed pedophile? If it isn't high school kids, I find my way littered with sick little wraiths, and somehow or other they're always more fun to be around than the people I usually associate with."

"You're the one who spent three months locked away in Belle Reve, Lex," she shot back. "I'm sure the shrinks dug up every repressed feeling you ever had and put them on file. Why don't you try calling them if you have questions concerning your mental health?"

He winced, and finally, there was his old smirk. "Ouch."

"Tell me about this Amy girl," she demanded. He hesitated, and she turned on some watts, hoping to encourage him. "Off the record. Scout's honor."

"Scout's honor. Ha." He closed his eyes, rubbed his temple and snatched his hand away from his head as if it had zapped his fingers. "I think I need a coffee after all."

As if summoned, a waiter instantly arrived at his elbow, and Lex ordered it black with sugar, and another cappuccino for Chloe. He remained stubbornly silent until the coffee arrived, wrapped his hands around his cup and simply breathed in its scent. Chloe felt her eyebrows twitch as a relieved, almost loving smile spread over his face—she knew he liked coffee, but this was so much like her own natural response after a prolonged amount of time without it (a satisfied junkie's abandoned bliss) it goaded her into speaking, even though she'd resolved to keep silent until he'd told her all about this Amy.

"Christ, Lex, do you have a hangover or something?"

He looked up, startled. "What makes you say that?"

She pointed to his loving grasp around the cup. "Your intimate relationship with your coffee. It's like watching Lois wake up after…no, no! I wasn't going to say anything. You were going to tell me about your visits to these kids."

"Amy."

"Yes, Amy. Is she a meteor freak?"

"I think she may be." He was silent for a few seconds, ponderously stirring his coffee.

In the meantime Chloe studied him from behind lowered eyelids. Most of his face was cast in shadow, but the Tiffany lamp behind him shone through his right ear, making it look pink and translucent, and it somehow picked up on a slight cut on his jaw and on the highlights of his eyebrow and lashes. And something reddish. She blinked, but before she could focus Lex said,

"She wasn't there the first time I looked them up…"

"You visited them more than once??" Lex shot her a look. "Sorry. Go on."

"Twice. I went to see them twice. Like I said, they're cute, and they liked it when I came by, and so did I. Anyway, I only met Amy the last time I was there. Apparently some of those kids…girls…hmm…all girls…Anyway, some of those kids had developed some sort of…powers.

'Before you say anything, no, it's nothing like the Smallville freaks. Just small things. Things that might be chalked up to my blood as much as to the meteorite. And this Amy…" He took a sip of coffee.

Chloe wanted to pour her cappuccino over his head. _Say it, you bastard! Say it!_

"I told you that these kids were all more or less declared permanently bald because of my—or the meteorite's effect, didn't I? Not just because of the radiation therapy, but because of the treatment itself."

"Uhuh."

"They're basically just like me. Well, I think that this girl, Amy, has somehow gained the ability to either unblock or remove some of the side effects of the meteorite."

Was it her, or was he blushing? Like he was really uncomfortable, or embarrassed. Lex Luthor handled embarrassment very, very well. She'd seen people spit into his face and he'd just smiled. She'd seen him arm-deep into some woman's cleavage with a face so smooth and pale he could have been praying. But now his cheeks were pink where the light touched them, and she played back his last sentence, trying to figure out why.

"She removed a side effect of the meteorite? So what is it that you…?" She stopped. Lex grew even redder. As red as the glint she'd seen in the light of the Tiffany lamp. Her hand reached out of her own, and after a slight hesitation he bowed his head so she could run her fingers over his scalp. A wide, 3000 watt grin pushed the corners of her mouth towards her ears.

"Oh Lex!" she squealed. "You've got _hair_!"

_Kill me now_, Lex thought. He yanked his head back. _I don't care who, or how, but please, please kill me now._ He sat in a fever of humiliation while Chloe carried on and on about how wonderful this all was and wished he'd acted on his initial impulse: get rid of it all.

He was amazed she'd had to feel it before she noticed. To him, it felt so blatantly obvious it should be seen from miles away. Ok, it was kind of dark in here, but still…

"Lex?"

He dragged himself out of his senseless self-pity and tried to meet her eyes. He couldn't, somehow, so he smiled weakly into his half-empty coffee cup. The cup gave him a wink. _You can do it, tiger._

_God, I need a drink._

"Lex, aren't you happy?"

"I keep thinking of the tabloids," he blurted out, and he _really_ hadn't planned on saying that aloud. Chloe snickered. Hurt, he finally managed to look her in the face. Her smile was mocking, but full of affection. "What?"

"It is so typical for you that you wave away my rather serious allegations and instead worry about the public's reaction to you growing a fine mop of hair."

"It's not a fine mop," he snapped. "It's a hideous stubble."

Her mouth quirked. "I didn't know you were a red-head."

Lex moaned. "You can see that even now? Wait, wasn't I up on your Wall of Weird?"

"Yes," she said patiently. "You were. But you were kind of bald, so I didn't know you were red."

"Well, I am."

She laughed. The bitch was laughing at him. He glared at her, but she just laughed harder.

"Oh Lex, you're so…so…gah! You're pouting!"

"I am not," he said with dignity.

"Yes, you are."

"I am most certainly not."

"Lex, if you push out your lower lip any further I can put my cookie on it."

"Luthors don't pout."

"Well, stop it then."

He groaned and put his head in his hands, flinching again at the unfamiliar scrape against his fingers. The coffee had made the last echoes of nausea disappear and the aspirin had cleared his headache, but he still felt unreasonably tired, and Chloe's reaction just made him want to curl up under the table. He jerked as her fingers slid over his head again.

"Are you feeling ok?"

"No," he said before his automatic answer machine kicked in. _We are experiencing a glitch in the connection. _"Yes, of course I'm fine."

The evil woman was still smiling, amused at his suffering, but her eyes were sympathetic. Not-understanding, but sympathetic. "I don't get why you're so upset, but you don't seem fine to me."

"I don't feel so fine." _Normal services will be resumed shortly. If this glitch continues, please contact our helpdesk._ He bit his tongue and almost squeaked as he drew blood. What the hell was that about? He used to chew on his tongue all the time—it kind of came with being Lionel's son—and he'd never hurt himself before. This had to stop. Hair or not be damned, he wanted to stop feeling like such a fucking weakling!

"I think I'll just go and look up Amy again. Tell her to reverse her…whatever it is."

"Why?" asked Chloe.

His eyes widened. "Why??" he cried in a whisper—which made him sound rather idiotic.

Chloe just smiled and nodded. "Yeah, why? I mean, this is your chance to be normal. Isn't that what all meteor freaks secretly want to be? Normal?"

Lex felt his lip curl. _Why?_ he seethed silently. _Because it sucks to be weak. It sucks to have headaches. It sucks to be sick, and it sucks to get drunk. It's an all-out fucking DEEP-THROAT to be normal, and I don't WANT to be like that._

Somehow, her reporter antennae must have picked that up, and her smile turned into a smirk of the kind he'd practiced in front of the mirror. Or maybe his disgust for 'normal' was plain enough to see. "Ah, it's your pride! You _did_ get a hangover! That's it, isn't it? You lost your equilibrium, and now you're throwing a hissy fit because you're feeling sorry for yourself."

"Luthors…"

"Stuff it, Lex. You're almost drowning in it." She leaned forward, and boy, he hadn't noticed her cleavage before. "I," she said, giving a little wave at his head, "happen to like this. And I think you should give it a chance. If you feel sick, go and see your doctor. Maybe it's just your body readjusting. Who knows? If you're still feeling weak after a few days you can always go back and ask Amy to undo it, right?"

He nodded, slowly and extremely unwilling. But Chloe calling him…well, basically a coward, stung his pride. He desperately grasped for a witty reply. Again service was withheld. His intelligence was officially offline.

"You just want to see me with hair," he said petulantly.

She shot him a wicked grin. "Oh hell yes, I do."

"You don't care that I feel weak and miserable."

"Nope. Lex, you're a red-head! I'm almost swooning because of the cuteness. Are you chestnut or auburn?"

"Neither," Lex said gloomily. "I used to be the kind of kid they called a match stick. And I swear to god and any heathen substitute that if you ever publish that I _will_ ruin your career."

He checked his watch. How time flew when you were having a good time. It was almost noon.

"I need to go."

"Not to see Amy, do you?" she implored, suddenly serious. "It'd be such a shame. You really should see how it develops."

"Let's watch the flowers grow," Lex sang softly and sarcastically. She was still serious. He sighed. "Oh, fine. One week, then I'm going back."

"Yay!" said Chloe. He couldn't tell to what extent she was mimicking his sarcasm. Maybe she wasn't. Women were strange beings, sometimes.

"I need to get back to my plans for China. You want a third-page place for next Monday, Chloe? LeXCorp is opening a plant in China. You'll have to do some digging on your own to find out more. That is," he interrupted himself, remembering the reason why they were here in the first place, "if you've run out of accusations for today."

She shook her head, had the decency to look embarrassed.

"No. Smith claims you are responsible in the first place too, but I don't believe that."

Lex's heart rate sped up, and he schooled his features to form his common blank expression.

"I'm glad to hear it, Chloe. Of course, if you want to investigate the source of this cancer, if there is a source at all, I can point you to a couple of experts that are working for LuthorCare. Although so far, they haven't found anything."

"Nah," she said, climbing out of her chair and wobbling on her truly lickable boots. "That's ok. I'm still going to run the evidence through a couple of my contacts, though…"

Even though her face was turned away from him, he could feel her inquisitive gaze, so he shrugged for her benefit and said, "Of course. I'd expect nothing less of you. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have work to do. I'll settle that tab. You go and do something unpleasant to your Mister Smith." _Or I will. Maybe I should, just to make a point. He can't be that hard to find._

"Lex," Chloe warned.

"Don't worry. Never on a Saturday." He flashed her a grin; she returned it, and a minute later she had clicked out of the building and he was leaning against the elevator wall as it zoomed upward to his apartment.

Fine, he wouldn't be a coward. He would see how it was to be normal. To have hair, and to have hangovers.

_I only wish_, he muttered to himself as he opened his door, _I could get this nagging feeling out of my head that I'm forgetting something. Something important. Something vital. If only I knew what kind of glaringly obvious but somehow unattainable fact I'm overlooking._


	4. Chapter 4

Damn, I was hoping to have finished this by Christmas. Ah well. At least I had the holiday to type : ) On with the story. Four: in which Lex remembers and Chloe is a relieved reporter 

Mariah Carey wanted Lex. For Christmas. It was all she wanted.

Lex, not very much interested in busty bimbos unless they produced pheromones that screwed with his mind, switched the channel. Only to find out that Whitney Houston wanted him as well. He tapped the button on the steering wheel, and the station changed.

"Do you hear what I hear?"

"No," Lex said, and tapped the button.

"…and ring-ting-tingeling too. Come on it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you."

"Not in this weather it isn't," Lex grumbled, and switched channels.

"Here we are as in olden days, happy golden days of yore. Faithful friends who are dear to us gather near to us once more."

"Fuck you." He switched to another station, but his right hand had already released the wheel and was now rummaging through his cd collection.

Some panting ho was now reminiscing about what she wanted to do with Santa-baby. Lex thought she was obscene beyond belief.

"…and hurry down the chimney tonight!"

Switch.

"A beautiful sight, we're happy tonight, walking in a winter wonderland."

"Just look at the bloody streets, you moron," Lex sputtered angrily, taking an uholy pleasure in his own annoyance. "Does that look like winter wonderland to you?"

Switch. Jazz channel. That sounded promising. But no:

"…hard to sleep tonight. They know that Santa's on his way. He's loaded lots of toys

and goodies on his sleigh…"

"Greedy little buggers," he growled. He drummed his finger on top of the button, and laughed incredulously at the fragments of song blaring through his speakers:

"Santa…"

"Merry Christmas to…"

"White, Christmas…"

"Santa's coming…"

"Snow bells ringing and…"

"This Christmas…"

"Rudolf the red-nosed…"

"Last Christmas I gave you…"

"Pa rum pum pum pum…"

"Hark, can you hear the angels sing…"

"Simply having a wonderful Christmas time…"

"Isn't there ANY radio station that isn't infected?" he roared. At that moment, he finally found the cd he'd been looking for and, with a hoarse crow of triumph, savagely thrust it into the player. Lionel chased Christmas away with the bombast of Wagner, Mozart and Beethoven; well, Lex had his own, more modern way to escape. The jolly sounds of Christmas came to an abrupt end and the infernal din of Rammstein filled his car. Lex cranked up the volume with relish.

Chloe and Lana always claimed that Christmas Carols made them feel warm and fuzzy. Carols made Lex feel homicidal. His personnel had learned early on not to turn on the radio when he was around, nor to hum anything related to Christmas under their breath. When confronted with jingling bells, gay Santas or winter wonderlands, Lex tended to start throwing things. He simply couldn't help himself. He _hated_ Christmas, and he hated the fact that two stupid days filled other people with happiness while the 25th and the 26th of December only served to remind him that everyone in his family hated one another.

Peace on earth.

Not for the Luthors.

If he wasn't shot or tainting his soul by sabotaging his ex-best friend's dad's political aspirations, he and his father were plotting how to sabotage _each other_. The only good Christmas he'd ever had had turned out to be a coma dream, and it had ended with his coma wife's death. Santa could rot in the chimney for all he cared.

He preferred Rammstein. Marilyn Manson would suffice as well, but there was something raw and ruthless in Rammstein's electric guitars and dark voices he particularly enjoyed…not to mention that the lyrics were in German. Father Christmas was invented by Coca Cola. Coca Cola was American. Marilyn Manson was American too. Reason concluded that to not only kill the spirit of Christmas, but also exorcize it and burn its remains, it was more effective to listen to German music than to American music.

Unfortunately, he'd already arrived at the hospital. He parked his Porsche, soaked up a few more moments of German hard rock, turned off the engine and hopped out. He was feeling a lot better than the day before. Apparently hangovers really did put your out of commission for most of one day; he was almost back to normal today—if, of course, you could call him normal.

The red bristles on his head (carefully mown away from his jaws) were now clearly visible even in low light, but contrary to his fears he as of yet hadn't been attacked by the paparazzi. At least, no more than usual. Maybe they just didn't care, he thought as he wandered into the hospital, ignored the spastic lights in the hallways and took the elevator to the third floor. Maybe he had been vain thinking that the tabloids would take an interest in him. Of course, the suicide rate of this month was spectacular. One could doubtlessly write a much juicier article about the suicide of a loving house father than about the unexpected growth on a billionaire's scalp.

The elevator pinged, and he walked into the blissfully undecorated office of Dr. Neil Scanlan, who had been the one to oppose operating on Lex two Christmasses ago, when he'd been shot, because it was too risky. Apparently he'd actually tried to fight Lionel when dear old dad had come to whisk him away to either total recovery or early death.

Lex figured that any man who was prepared to stand up to a Luthor to save his patient, (even if, in the end, it hadn't helped and Lex would have been in a wheel chair if Lionel hadn't made that decision), was worth trusting. The fact that there weren't any frantic LED reindeer or glittering trees only strengthened Lex's feelings on that matter.

Scanlan was already awaiting him. He put down a paper file on his table, rose from his chair and welcomed Lex with a warm handshake. His eyes flicked briefly to Lex's head, but he didn't comment on it. Another reason to like the man. Lex didn't think he'd survived if Scanlan had squealed about his waxing locks as well.

"Mister Luthor. Lex." Men prepared to risk their job to protect him were entitled to address him by his first name.

"Dr. Scanlan. Thank you for seeing me on a Sunday."

"Not at all. I had to be at the hospital anyway. Please," he gestured to a chair, "Have a seat."

Lex sat down and began to roll up the sleeve of his shirt. Scanlan didn't waste any time with idle conversation either, but opened a drawer in his desk and took out a wrapped-up syringe.

"Did you read my file?" Lex asked.

Scanlan nodded. "Yes, I did." He wrapped a thin strip of rubber around Lex's bicep and gently tapped the large vein in the hollow of his elbow. "It made for some very interesting reading. Of course I've seen it before, but again I must say I was stunned. Your blood work is quite exceptional—although not as exceptional as your total recovery from the numerous injuries you've sustained over the years. With as its shining zenith the incident two years ago." He inserted the needle, and gently pulled back the plunger to draw blood into the thin glass vial attached to it. "What makes you think something has changed?"

"Oh," said Lex airily. "A couple of things. You've got all required equipment available?"

"Yes, it's in the room next door. But for immediate results, I'd like to have a look through my plain old microscope here, if you don't mind."

"On the contrary." Lex stared at the small hole in his arm. It continued to bleed until Scanlan covered it up with a small band-aid. Disturbing. Tiny wounds like these usually scabbed over while he was watching.

The doctor caught a few drops of Lex's blood on a glass plate, covered them up with an even thinner square of glass and put them under the microscope on his desk. He let out a surprised 'Huh!".

"Yes?" asked Lex. He pressed on the tiny puncture wound. It stung. He wasn't healing at all. Again the feeling that he was forgetting something nagged at him, but again he couldn't figure out what it actually was.

"Well," Dr. Scanlan said, a smile on his pock-marked face, "at first glance, your blood seems to be perfectly fine."

"But at second glance…?"

"Your blood _is_ perfectly fine. For a normal man."

"But?"

"Compared with your old blood, if I read your file correctly, you are now suffering from severe leukopenia."

Lex opened one of the drawers in his mind; the one containing his collection of hospital terms. This one term was stored in a top drawer; he'd seen and heard it several times in connection with Cradle Cancer.

"Leukopenia…" he said slowly. "Low white blood count?"

"Precisely. Probably, but I'll need to do more research to be sure, neutropenia. Of course, I am only speaking of leukopedia compared to your old blood count. By the looks of it…" he cast another glance through the microscope, "your blood acts like a prime specimen from the blood bank."

"So," Lex wondered, "what does that mean? I've noticed I'm not healing as fast as I used to do. And that certain things…affect me more."

Scanlan abandoned his microscope and sat back in his chair. "As far as I can tell after this very preliminary analysis," he said, "your white blood count is now like any young, healthy male's."

_He makes me sound like some sort of animal,_ Lex thought.

"Which means that yes, your healing rate should be lower than it was before. Which means that over the few days you may suffer from mild injuries you never noticed before. The effects of alcohol…"

_Uhuh, been there, done that, _Lex thought.

"…of medications, even food or allergens. Were you allergic to anything before you were caught out in the meteor storm?"

"I had asthma," Lex said somberly. He swallowed. "Will that return as well? Because if it does…" _Coward or not, LuthorCorp will NOT be led by someone who depends on an inhaler. I refuse to revert back to being THAT weak._

"No, no, I don't think so," Scanlan hurriedly reassured him, "If you've been healthy ever since, the likelihood of respiratory diseases returning again is almost nil." His smile became a little bit wicked. "Of course, that doesn't count for the common cold."

_No asthma, that's good, that was my—_"WHAT?" He recalled the disgusting phlegmy masses down in the central hallway. "I'll get sick?"

"Not necessarily," the doctor said beatifically. "Though the chances are quite high. You're probably immune to most of the strains, since your neutrophiles dealt with them before they could affect your health, but if you look at the amount of people suffering from flu and colds at the moment, I'd say you're in for a few rough days, some time this month. I take it you haven't had as much as a running nose for the past twenty years?"

Lex, flattened, was silent. His mind was squirming inside his head. _Low white blood count means more susceptible to colds. Colds means horrible amounts of snot, loss of dignity, discomfort…effect of Kryptonite kept me healthy…I'm still missing something…_

"Is there ANYthing positive about this whole business?" he asked despondently.

"Well," Scanlan said with a little gesture to his own head, "you seem to have started growing hair again."

"Whoop-de-do," Lex grumbled—and then it FINALLY struck him, the thought that had been eluding him for two entire days. It sucked the breath from his lungs, as if his asthma had returned after all, and left him reeling in his chair, feeling his blood drain from his face.

_The children. The children! For fuck's sake, why didn't I think of this before? Was I this slow before the meteor shower? Did it make me smarter, or something?_

He was up from his chair and halfway out of the door before Scanlan's anxious voice registered.

"Mister Luthor! Lex! What's wrong? I'm sorry if I…"

"It's nothing," Lex said. "Nothing at all, I just remembered I had another appointment." He fished his phone from his pocket and called over his shoulder, "Just analyze my blood and send me the result by fax, will you? Thanks for your time."

He missed the doctor's reply in his haste to get to the elevator. The phonebook in his mobile was locked by password, and he typed it wrong twice before he could finally open it.

"David…David…No, his name is Reese…Decan!" he selected Valerie's mobile phone number, then cursed himself for a fool again when it started to ring. He'd given her some time off until she was better. And it was Sunday. She was probably sick at home; she wouldn't…

"Hello?" She'd picked up.

"Valerie?" he said. The elevator doors closed; the lift zoomed quietly down. "It's Lex Luthor. I'm sorry I've called you, I actually need to get to contact Reese. I forgot you're…you're still at home, right?"

"Yeah." Her voice was still nasal, but she sounded alert enough. "What is it? Can I help? Does it concern the children?"

"Yes," he blurted out, and punished himself by knocking his head against the elevator wall. He really HAD to stop saying things before he had a convincing lie at the ready. He also had to stop hitting his head against walls while other people were present. Like, for instance, the old lady with her grandson, who were staring at him as if he'd gone nuts. "No, not really. Maybe. I need to speak to Reese, but I'm not sure I have his number with me. Can you…"

_Bleep_.

"Hang on," he said, "I've got another incoming call. Please hold on, will you?"

"Sure. I'll look up David's number."

"Thanks." He switched to the other call. "Lex Luthor."

"Mister Luthor. It's David Reese. We have a problem."

Lex closed his eyes, then snapped them open and pushed through the opening doors to the hall beyond.

_Amy. She blocked the effects of the meteorite that removed my hair but boosted my healing. Emmy said something to Jessica, something about rather having her power to predict cards than something else…She was talking about hair. I'm such an idiot!_

"The children? Listen, David, I…"

"Lex, it's a madhouse down here! Everything's going wrong! There's something wrong with the kids. It's as if…they're growing worse by the hour. But we're looking for substitute treatments as we're speaking and I'm sure we'll get it back under control. What I'm calling you for is…"

"Reese! It's Amy!"

Reese's avalanche of words temporarily halted, then he said, "You already know? Oh god…"

Lex opened his car from a distance and slip-slided through the filthy slush to his door. His heart suddenly seemed to big for his chest.

"David? What do you mean?"

"Amy."

He fell down in his seat. "What's wrong with Amy? She isn't dead, is she? David, if she's dead…"

"No! Or at least, we don't think so. Lex, she's gone! Amy is gone!"

Lex sat there for a few seconds, mouth opening and closing like a fish without getting a word out. Reese was still talking, apologizing, asking permission to notify the police.

_Amy blocked the effects of the treatment. She blocked the fucking cure. Did she block herself too? Where is she? Did she leave herself? Impossible, she couldn't possibly have. Then, was she taken? Where? By whom? Why? Her parents?_

Suddenly, it was very clear what he had to do. "Yes," he interrupted Reese's frantic questions. "Call the police. Set up a search party. Are her parents notified?"

"They're here," Reese said. He was almost crying on the phone. "They're hysterical. Why would anyone do this? She's just a sick girl! And if she's deteriorating like the others…"

"Get a hold of yourself," Lex said sternly. He jammed the phone between his head and shoulder, zipped out of his parking place, and got back on the road. "I'm coming right over. But there are a few things I need to know, so I need you to calm down and answer me, do you understand?"

Reese breathed in and out, loudly, for a couple of times, and then his voice was steady again. "Yes. I'm all right now."

"Good. First, the last treatment left them bald, right. As in, permanently bald. You haven't changed their medication since then, have you?"

"I wouldn't know!" Reese wailed. "I'm your contact, not their doctor; I'm just a scientist!"

"Then find a doctor and ask him. Ask him too whether the kids have started growing hair again. Ask him if they've all started to grow hair, or only a few. Go on, ask!"

Reese talked to someone in the background for some time, then came back online and asked, "How did you know?"

"Answers, David. I'm waiting."

"Right. Um, no, until now they hadn't changed their medication. But you were right; about fifteen of the kids have started growing hair again. We hadn't really noticed: they're still wearing those silly hats most of the time, and with the quarantine and staff shortage and all…we hadn't noticed."

"Ok." Lex swerved around a Christmas shopper and put his fist on the horn. "Ok. Listen to me. I know what's wrong with the children. You know that sometimes the meteorite creates some…abilities in people?"

"Yes, but we focused on the healing part of the…"

"Shut up and listen to me. One of the girls got the ability to predict the near future."

"Yes, Jessica."

"Exactly. Amy also developed some sort of power. I've come to believe that she either blocks, or cancels the effect of the meteorite. In short, those kids that have started growing hair again, have had their cure cancelled. The others should be fine. So don't change the treatment of those few—Jessica would be one of them."

He took a left turn on two wheels, hit a garbage can and lost his phone while he yanked on the steering wheel. He dived after it and retrieved it without losing speed.

"Lex? Lex, are you still there?"

"Yeah," he replied, suddenly giddy with adrenalin, "I'm here. David, it's imperative that we find Amy back. Apart from her own safety, the lives of the other kids depend on it. We HAVE to find her! If we don't, we might lose them."

"You think she can reverse what she's done?"

"If she can't, we have an even bigger problem than we have now. Have the police been informed yet?"

"Johnson's working on that now."

"Good. I'll be there in a couple of minutes." He hung up. Immediately the phone rang again. "Lex Luthor."

"Lex, it's me, Valerie."

_Now it's official : my IQ's definitely plummeted. I've NEVER forgotten a second call before._

"I've found David's number."

"It's ok, he already called me himself. Thanks though. Sorry for calling you." He glanced at a nearing traffic light, judged the number of people crossing the street, and came to a purring stop.

"David called you?" a hint of panic crept into her voice. "Why? Is everything all right? Is it Jessica? She…"

"Peachy," said Lex. The light went green, and he burned rubber. "Jessica's just fine. Don't worry. I'll see you next week, Valerie."

He disconnected before she could say anything else and hoped that she wasn't like him. Because if she was as dedicated to her work as he was to his, he'd probably meet her in the LuthorCare elevator in her pajamas.

He screeched to a halt just outside the LuthorCare tower, took a deep breath, and got out.

LuthorCare was like an ant hill. People were running to and fro, looking panicked and stressed. The moment he came in, people clung to Lex and demanded explanations and solutions. Most of them didn't even know what the panic was about. Thankfully, those members of his staff were easily reassured, told off and returned to their own work. It was the 23rd floor that filled Lex with dread.

If he'd been a little more desperate, David Reese would have fallen Lex around the neck, weeping. As it were, Lex didn't think anyone had ever been so grateful to see him as the scientist.

"Mister Luthor!" he cried. "Thank god you're here! The girl's parents…" he blinked, opened his mouth to comment on Lex's scalp, then probably decided it was unimportant and continued, "Amy's parents are livid! They refuse to leave the building. They insist on searching every floor."

"So let them," Lex said. He tossed his coat onto a chair. "Just get them out of the children's room and make sure they don't interfere with anything or see anything they're not supposed to see. Is the police here yet?"

"No, not yet. But…"

"Wonderful. I want to speak to the children before they're intimidated by the police."

"I hardly think the police…" Reese sputtered, but Lex ignored him. He unfolded one of the plastic anti-contamination coats, shrugged into it and made for the sluice. "Mister Luthor!" whined Reese.

"This'll only take a minute," Lex said calmingly. "Just keep the police away from the kids for now, until I'm done talking to them. As soon as I'm done I'll come and handle the parents. Don't worry, David. I'll take care of it."

As he entered the children's room, he immediately noted the change of atmosphere. All the children were in bed, and when they turned their heads to look who was coming in, they remained silent, their eyes wide and anxious. Lex's shoes made no sound on the linoleum; he felt like a ghost as he walked between their beds, while they kept quiet and followed his process with gently turning faces. Like clockwork dolls.

Ronny's train track had been taken apart and stacked up beneath his bed; he held the locomotive clenched in one small fist. He was wearing his Christmas hat. Without saying a word, Lex reached out and plucked the hat from his head—and breathed a huge sigh of relief. Shiny like a marble. Amy hadn't blocked him. He ran his hand over the boy's smooth scalp before tenderly smoothening the fake fur trim back until it touched his ears.

"Hello, Ronny."

"Hi Lex." He sounded small and insecure.

Lex smiled at him. He went to search out another familiar face…and found it beneath a short fuzz of honey blond hair. Emmy did not raise her head from the pillow as he sat down on the edge of her bed. He felt sick as he studied her face. He hadn't seen her for…what? Two days? Less. But in those two days her eyes seemed to have grown to an impossible size in her small, thin face.

"Hey Emmy." She made a tiny sound. An unidentifiable stuffed animal was lodged between her chin and shoulder, propping up her head. "Where's mommy?" she asked.

"I don't know, Emmy. I'm sure she'll come soon. How are you feeling?"

She just stared at him. "I want my mommy."

"Are you…" He sighed. Of course she was in pain. It wasn't as if he could do anything about it. "Emmy, I need to ask you something. It's very important."

"Yes?" she whispered.

"It's about Amy."

"She's gone," Emmy whispered.

"Yes, I know. She was your friend, right?" A nod. "Do you know where she went?" A shake of the head. "Do you know…have you seen anything? Did someone visit her?"

"Just her mom and dad. Yesterday. My mommy's coming today. She said she would." Her big eyes filled with tears, and she trailed a small finger over her scalp. "I wanted to show her…I wanted to show her that I don't need to wear hats anymore."

If he'd had a shotgun and Emmy's mother had been in the same room, she'd been lying in a bleeding heap on the linoleum. Of course Amy wouldn't have known that what she was doing was going to get her friends killed. But if that dreadful woman hadn't antagonized these kids—her own daughter!—they'd never felt the need to let Amy do her freakage.

"I'm sure she'll be here in a little while," he said, stroking a finger over her hand. "Just rest for a bit, won't you?"

"Okay…" she breathed, and closed her eyes. Lex sat up, pressed his lips together and waited until his lower lip stopped trembling. The tang of blood from a chewed tongue spread though his mouth; he studied the taste, used it to reign in his emotions, just like his father had taught him. When he got up and faced the rest of the kids, he was as calm and collected as usual.

"Right, kids. Sorry for the late greeting, but as you've probably noticed, something unpleasant has happened, and I need you to tell me anything, anything at all that you know concerning Amy."

Jack, who had climbed into bed with his sister, raised his hand.

"Yes, Jack? You don't have to put up your hand, you can say whatever you want."

"Um…Amy's not here."

"I know," Lex said. "The thing is, we don't know where she went. Does anyone have any idea what's happened to her?"

"She was here this morning," Jessica said from the other end of the room. She had slipped out from under the covers and was now perched on her bed in her dressing gown. Her head shone pale like the moon in the soft light, and again Lex felt that overwhelming sense of relief he'd also felt when seeing Ronny. He walked up to her, sat down on her bed.

"When was the last time you saw her?"

"About seven. Most of us were still asleep. She went to the bathroom." Her face twisted. "I should've gone with her. She must have run away…or maybe she was kidnapped. But how? And why?"

_That glitch you've been experimenting? It's still here. We're working on it._ Lex gasped in exasperation. There was an answer to the why, he just knew it. But what was it? And why couldn't he grasp it?

"Lex?" He shook his useless thoughts away. "Emmy and Michael and Tina and the others getting sick again…it has something to do with Amy, doesn't it? With her…ability."

"Yes," Lex confirmed. "It does. And that's why it's really important to find her back. She has to undo it. If she doesn't…I'm not sure if we can find another cure in time."

Her mouth jerked. She reached out her hand and brushed his forehead. "She did it to you too, didn't she?"

"Yes, she did."

"Does that mean you'll get sick too?"

He smiled reassuringly and shook his head. "No, I won't. I'll be fine. Don't worry about me."

A hesitant smile crept up her face. "You're very…red," she said. "I'm not surprised you didn't mind having no hair."

Subtle. Lex smirked, but he appreciated her honesty. After all, her reaction was pretty much exactly the same as his own. "Yeah," he said. "with my hair, it was almost a blessing to be bald." She giggled. "Can you remember anything else about Amy? Anyone visiting her who wasn't her father or mother? Anyone ever entering this room that didn't belong here? A doctor or nurse you'd never seen before?"

She shook her head. "No, no one. We don't get so many visitors. We pretty much know every one of them. And it's the same for the doctors."

The other kids all nodded in agreement. No one had seen anyone unfamiliar. No one knew why Amy was missing or where she could have gone.

"Do you know when Miss Decan'll come back?" one of the girls asked. "I miss her."

"Soon," promised Lex. He was wracking his mind for more questions, but nothing came forward. He sat and chatted with them for another minute or so, trying to calm them down more than anything, when Reese stuck his head inside and called his name.

"The police wants to question the kids. And they want to talk to you as well. And Amy's parents are still here, too." It was a triple call for help, and Lex rose to respond to it.

"If you just happen to remember anything," he told the kids, "anything that might be useful at all, even if you don't think it'll be, just tell David or Miss Decan when she comes back, and they'll call me, ok?"

"Ok," the children agreed. They all looked utterly clueless. Lex sighed and went to confront first the police and then the missing girl's parents.

**Error. Access denied**.

"Aargh. Why won't you accept this password?" Chloe typed it in again, using only one finger although it went against every keyboard wiz kid feeling she'd built up over the years. A twenty-six number-and-letter-combination—why couldn't corporations just stick with the name of their first dog, or their Director's daughter's birthday? She hit enter.

Error. Access denied.

"Why?!" she screamed, and slammed her fists down on her desk. "Why won't you accept it? It's correct! My crack program always works, so why won't you open that goddamn file!!?"

"Pipe down, will ya, Sullivan?" someone groaned a few desks away from her. "You're way too noisy for a Monday morning."

"How can I do my job as a fucking reporter if I can't infiltrate into other people's business?" Chloe seethed. "The fucking agricultural ministry's intranet's firewall has crippled my fucking crack program!"

"That's a lot of fuck before the clock of nine," an amused voice spoke up from behind her. She whirled around and felt her rage dissipate at the sight of a freshly-pressed and laundered Clark Kent with a take-away Starbucks cup in each hand. "Here. Take a break. Have a coffee. You look like you need one."

"Clark, you're a life saver!" She fairly snatched the coffee out of his hand and savored its warm, sweet smell. Clark sat down on the edge of her desk, taking care not to upset her out-tray.

"I aim to please. Why do you need to hack into the agricultural ministry anyway? Are they feeding chickens to pigs again?"

Chloe shrugged. She retyped the execution code, pressed enter and watched as the crack program started over. Maybe it had just made an error. It did happen, sometimes. Ok, it never happened before, but it could have happened this time.

"Just some vague lead I got from someone," she said vaguely. It was Smith's, of course, but just like his other 'information' it seemed to be nothing more than a dead end.

Clark chuckled. "Guarding your new headline? Don't worry, Chloe, for the next few months Perry's got me assigned to football matches and openings. Even if I got him an article proving that Kansas' new fertilizer consists of chopped-up shark he wouldn't let me off. Your articles are quite safe. Speaking of articles…" He pulled a rolled-up Planet out of his jacket, unfolded it and showed her her own LuthorCorp-in-China editorial. "Have you been talking to Lex again?"

Chloe noisily slurped her coffee. "What if I had?"

"Nothing. It's just…I don't trust him. It'd be just like him to give you false information, and if it ever comes out, it might hurt you." He grimaced when she fixed him with a cold stare. "I know, I know, you're a grown woman and you're independent and all, but…I don't want you to get hurt. People very easily get hurt around Lex."

"Oh come on Clark," Chloe sighed. "It isn't as if he's walking around with a shotgun. Nor is he the bogey man you're so convinced he's become. Take this whole cancer thing…"

"Exactly," said Clark. "Why's he so interested in these kids? I mean if Lex…"

"Hang on," Chloe interjected, gratefully, as her phone mewed. Not the one on her desk, nor the one she kept in her bag, but the sexy, flat, slick, black, Nokia the Daily Planet had given her after a full year of excellent service that had its place of honor in a special holder next to her coffee thermos. Whenever Clark started ranting about Lex's Evil Overlordness she became agitated.

Partly, because Clark was right, and she couldn't defend Lex.

Partly, because Clark was wrong, but when she listed all Lex's virtues, it always came out wrong.

Somehow, saying 'But he donates millions to charity!', 'His research enabled the growth of crops in a desert area' and 'He really loves his employees!' had become inferior to 'He tested out the effects of an illegal chemical weapon on an island where fourteen people were having a picnic' and 'He tortured my friend because he wanted to know this friend's limits'. She was always happy to abandon Lex-discussions with Clark.

"Sullivan," she spoke into the dainty receiver.

A low feminine voice replied, "Hey Chloe. It's me, Jane. I checked your lists."

"You have?" Chloe cried. "That's quick! Thanks so much! So what do you think about them?"

"Well," she heard the flipping of pages on the other end of the line. "I don't know who wrote those stickies, but whoever he or she is, they don't know a fig about it."

Something that had been wound tight in Chloe's stomach uncoiled and eased back into place.

"No?" she grabbed a pen and a notepad. "Tell me." Clark raised his perfect eyebrows at her, and she shook her head. _No, this is going to take a while._ She stroked her half-empty cup and mouthed, _Thanks for the coffee!_ He grinned, patter her shoulder and sauntered off, all tousled hair and unconscious grace. Chloe tore her eyes away from his ass—bye bye teen crush—and focused on Jane Metlock's findings.

"I must say I can't trace all of the components they've used—according to the notes it's some kind of rock? But whatever it is, it has positive effects on the cancerous growth, even if it sometimes takes a few different tries."

"What about his…this guy's claim that the ch-the patients on that list are being exposed to other diseases?"

"That's just rubbish," Jane said curtly. "Those aren't diseases. Do you have your copy with you?"

"Yeah," Chloe said, opening her manila envelope. She went to the page that had made her stomach clench until Lex had told her that he had nothing to do with it.

"Ok," Jane continued. "Page four does describe the effects of some viruses on the patients' health, but LPAI and HPAI simply stands for low pathogenic and highly pathogenic. And those H-number combos? H5 and H7, H5N1, H7N7, and H7N3 and so forth? Those are flu strains. He's confusing flu and cold contamination with deliberate infection."

"Oh," Chloe exhaled. She reached out a shaky hand. Coffee. Blessed caffeine.

"So what this list is," the teacher went on, "is a description of how the patients and their condition are affected by various colds and flus. It also mentions which medication should be used in each case. Since the patients are obviously afflicted with some sort of cancer, I'm not at all surprised they actually made lists like this one for reference."

"So…" Chloe cleared her throat and tried again. "So there's no evidence of…you know, malicious intent or anything?"

Jane barked a laugh. "Not in this file, there isn't. It's very neat, very meticulous. Am I right when I'm guessing it's also very much classified?"

"Just a little."

Jane laughed. "So should I burn it?"

It really was amazing, Chloe thought, how Jane could be so glib while she was being very, very serious. "Yes," she said. "I'd appreciate that. Roll it into a cigarette or something. Or put it in the hearth."

"I don't smoke, and I have central heating," Jane said dryly. "But there's a bunch of tramps outside with one of those flaming dustbins. I'll just walk by and toss them in, if that's ok with you."

"Sounds like a million dollar plan, Janey." Chloe greedily gulped the last of her coffee. "Talking of money…what do I owe you?"

"A meal. No, two. One Sushi and one at that Indian Restaurant, Padme…Padme Pum…or something. I spent two evenings eating take-away and poring over your lists, so that seems about fair to me."

"Deal," Chloe said. She was so relieved she'd happily have bought her friend ten meals. "Next time I'm in Boston I'm taking you out."

"Don't make it too long. My fee comes with interest. If you wait too long you'll have to buy me another dinner."

"Next month," Chloe promised. "And thanks a ton! You really helped me out here."

"You're welcome," Jane said. "I rarely go out and eat Sushi these days. See you later, Chloe. Stay out of trouble. Bye!"

"And a very pleasant day to you," Chloe said. She put the phone back on its little stand and looked at her computer. The crack program had spat out another code. She typed it in and got her **Error! Access denied** message.

"Smith." Chloe growled. "We need to have a talk, one of these days."

TBC


	5. Chapter 5

Hi again! This is a bit of a short chapter, and it's all Lex. Don't worry, Chloe will be back next chapter. This is one of the scenes I was really looking forward to writing; one of the scenes that popped up in my had that made me write this entire fic. There are two more. One is the next chapter. An earlier one was the 'Oh Lex, you have hair!' squee. I'd have sooo loved to see AM and MR act that out :)

**I only hope I get Lionel's voice right in this chapter. I adore him, but he's difficult to write, at least to me. Please tell me if he's off in any way!**

Five: In which Lionel and Lex share a tender moment 

Smallville was a sea of little lights when seen from the crenels of the Luthor Mansion. They twinkled merrily in the distance. Lex had drawn the curtains of his study after ten minutes of agonized reminiscence. The times that he'd been happy here seemed very long ago, and he didn't need any more painful memories. The future was looking bleak enough as it was.

He blinked tiredly at his laptop. LuthorCare's security vid was tied directly to a central database he could access at all time, and he had downloaded the entire Sunday recording to his hard drive. He had looped the children's room vid, the hallway vid, and the bathroom vid from 6.50 to 7.30 am together on three different screens, but no matter how often he'd watched it, it refused to give him anything useful.

At 6.50 am Amy sat up in her little bed. She put her toy bunny down (did all children have stuffed animals? Lex couldn't remember whether he'd ever had one. He probably had. After he turned twelve, he usually slept with the little lead box, St George's Box of Hidden Fear, clutched in his hand.), slid out of bed and toed on her slippers. A few beds across from her, Jessica raised her head, possibly whispered something, and the smaller girl shook her head. Amy could be seen tiptoeing to the hallway. Jessical lay back down.

In the hallway, Amy's small white form padded slowly to the bathroom. She only had to walk about twenty meters to get there. She went in. A woman's figure (Lex had already identified as Nurse Frederica 'Freddie' Mason) came running up to her, and Amy stuck her head back out of the bathroom, apparently to answer something the woman had asked her. (the bathroom loop showed her standing in the door opening).

In the hallway, Freddie Mason nodded and leaned against the wall, arms crossed. Amy, in the meantime, entered one of the toilet booths.

And then…nothing. Freddy stood with her back against the wall in the hallway. She checked her watch. Amy did not come out. After five minutes she walked into the bathroom and called something. No reaction. She knocked on the doors of the stalls, opened them. All of the booths were empty, including the one Amy had entered. She was gone, and there was no trace to be found.

Lex sighed and rubbed his fingers through the fuzz on his head in exasperation while Freddie Mason ran out of the bathroom, out of the hallway camera's view, and to the cafeteria. The tape looped, and in the children's room, Amy sat up in bed. Lex would have liked to accuse Mason of kidnapping, but she was obviously innocent. So were Amy's parents. He could call them lots of things (rude, stupid, and all that) but they clearly had nothing to do with the disappearance of their little girl.

The problem was, there was no one around to accuse. Unless Amy had flushed herself away through the toilet, there was no way she had gone. But she _was_ gone.

"Where the hell did you go?" he muttered. He'd suspected Clark for a few seconds—about as long as it took him to play the video screen by screen. There was no tell-tale blur, no unidentifiable flash, no nothing. Besides, why would Clark want to abduct a sick child from a hospital? The man was often misguided, but he'd never been moronic.

But then who or what had it been? How could one make a girl disappear so totally, without even the presence of a window?

_Smallville freak? Unlikely._

He blindly reached out for his glass and took a sip of Lagavulin, savoring its strong, smoky flavor. The whiskey did marvels for his raw throat. Apparently normal people couldn't talk to raving parents, hysterical employees, the press, private detectives and concerned standers by for hours without getting a sore throat. Really, if he'd known just how much of a pain it was to be normal, he'd have been nicer to a lot of people.

He minimized the video feed and went back to his list of employees. 60 of them had been sick and home with a convincing alibi, so he'd put them in a separate list to check out later. So far he knew the entire background of 26 employees. The remaining 372…

He moaned and put his forehead on the table. Or, that had been the intention. Instead, he leaned on the keyboard, causing it to screech out in protest. Five hundred b's and n's appeared between the first and the last name of one of the staff from floor 10. Lex deleted them wearily.

He was so tired. He didn't think he'd ever been this exhausted before, and why? It wasn't as if he'd been busy. Yes, that whole matter at LuthorCare had been unfortunate, and press conferences dealing with company screw-ups were always unpleasant, but that didn't explain him falling asleep behind his desk at one in the morning. In the middle of an email to Mr. Wong concerning his power plant in Xue Dong. At least he could still speak Chinese. After the general failing of his brain power, he wouldn't have been surprised if he'd lost the ability to speak any foreign language. But no, French, Chinese, German and Russian at least were still at his command, although having a telephone conversation in three of those languages at the same time now made his head spin.

Business continued, missing children or not. He was still good at it, too. Business. He took another swallow of whiskey and turned on the TV to watch the news.

First, war was glorified. Domination of other countries was going well. Lex knew all about the profits of war; LeXCorp had created a couple of beautiful weapons and protective suits for the army. Especially the suits were quite nice; protected a soldier's vitals and diminished the chance to be injured or even die with 99. Unfortunately they were still a bit expensive. The army rather invested in tanks and guns.

Then LuthorCare zoomed into view, and a dramatic voice-over brought the grave news of the missing girl. At least the police could have been persuaded to leave out the press until the entire premises had been searched (and any secrets had been hidden or destroyed) and, perhaps, a ransom note had been found. No such thing had happened. Sunday had gone by without a peep from Amy or any kidnappers, and the news could not be withheld anymore.

Lex had convinced the police to call him as soon as any demands for the girl's life were made; up to now, he hadn't heard anything. Now being Monday, eight pm. He'd given his statement at two in the afternoon.

"…_not enough. Someone has taken little Amy Murray from LuthorCare, where she was receiving treatment." The heavily made-up anchor reported breathily. "Mrs. and Mister Murray, do you have any idea how this could have happened?"_

Mister Murray vocalized his indignation and shock in no uncertain terms. To Lex's surprise, it had been him, and not his wife, who had provided Amy with her magnificent eyes. He'd been a rather small man, the Asian influence even more pronounced in his features, but his eyes had been the same brilliant blue-green-gold hue. As far as Lex was concerned, they were his only redeeming feature. The man was loud, unsupportive, unhelpful. He seemed convinced Lex was to blame for the disappearance of his daughter and no reasonable arguments had been able to pacify him. Even though Lex was used to being blamed for the most outrageous things, it still irked him, especially since this time, he was as astounded as anyone else.

And there he was, himself.

"_Mister Luthor, do you have any comments?"_

Lex noted with satisfaction that despite the dark red fluff, he still managed to look sleek and cool on television, and that his voice contained just the right mixture of arrogance, controlled outrage and sincerity required to convince people of his innocence.

"_This is a very unexpected, unacceptable turn of events. I can assure you that we're doing anything to get Amy Murray back."_

"_Do you think she's been kidnapped?"_

"_If she was, it has been done by someone who could walk through walls, or who is invisible. And while Kansas has seen stranger phenomena, I still consider the chances of something like that happening very slim." Lex's face stared straight into the lens, eyes serious and honest._

"_However, I would like to stress one thing. If anyone has, somehow, taken Amy Murray, I profoundly hope that that person realizes that Amy is a very sick girl who is dependent on medication that is only available in this hospital. Keeping her away from the LuthorCare facilities constitutes to more than abduction. It is endangering her life."_

"_Has there been…"_

"_I'm sorry. For other facts you'll need to speak to the police. If you'll excuse me…"_

And exit Lex Luthor. Another flawless performance in an absolutely rotten play.

"Cheers," said Lex, raising his glass to the woman on screen in mocking salute. He downed it and poured another one.

That had been at two. By three seven magazines and both major newspapers had phoned his poor PR manager for an interview and photo shoots. They were all wildly enthusiastic about his new look.

He sighed.

He should never have listened to Chloe. He shouldn't have listened to Valerie either. If he hadn't befriended those stupid kids he'd still be sneering down on the dumb crowds (instead of being one of them), he wouldn't have felt this coil of fear in his stomach about Amy (because then she'd just be a name, a photograph on TV, instead of a girl who made animals out of clay and cocktail pins), and he wouldn't have this _bloody_ headache. He didn't even have a concussion, for god's sake, so why did it ache anyway?

"Reboot," he told his mind. It kept running in loops, just like those LuthorCare tapes. Maybe he should put his beach sound tapes on again, and pretend he was on an uninhabited island. He hadn't listened to the soothing sound of waves in ages…

Prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr went his keyboard, and he pulled his head from the keys. At almost exactly the same time, the house phone made a short, modest sound, a bit like a polite cough. Lex rolled his chair to the other side of the desk, pressed the button and said, "Yes?"

His new guard was called Charlie Falls. Lex privately thought his name was a hoot, like a character from a comic book. The kind who, by his enemies, will always be called something like Charlie Trips or Charlie Autumn; and something corny like Lightbringer by his friends. He always took a certain sadistic pleasure in saying 'Charlie'.

"Yes, Charlie?" His smirk was quickly erased by Charlie's rather nervous reply.

"Mister Luthor…It's Mister Luthor. Your father. He's coming up as we speak."

"What? I specifically told you that no one, and ESPECIALLY my father…" He heard footsteps coming up the stairs. "Never mind." He sighed.

"I'm really sorry, sir. He just went trough! I mean, I can't shove a gun into his face now, can I?"

"Actually, that's what I expected you to do when I hired you," Lex hissed acidly. "Seems like I hired yet another butterfly collector."

Charlie was still sputtering when Lex broke the connection. For one second he didn't know what to do. If his father was here for the reason Lex thought he was, there was no way he was going to get out of an extremely humiliating moment—unless he jumped out of the window. He actually contemplated the idea for a moment, then decided that he wasn't quite desperate enough. Instead, he turned off all the lights he could reach from his chair, then got up and

Whoooaa. He grabbed the back of his chair and held on for dear life as the room spun around him.

How much could normal people drink before it screwed with their perception? Was it really only three glasses? Or maybe four?

Step step step went dear old dad up to the door. Lex dropped back into his chair and rolled as far away from the light as he could. He put his hand on the screen of his laptop, waiting for the point of maximum offence—the perfect 'I don't trust you enough to let you see my fucking _screen-saver_, Dad' moment—and waited. He was just in time to close his mouth, dropped open with anticipation, to face Lionel with an expression that only showed the smallest amount of bored surprise.

Lionel opened the door and strode inside as if he still owned the place.

Lex clicked the laptop shut. The flicker of his father's eyelids told him that he had timed it perfectly.

"Dad," he drawled. "I can't recall either receiving or issuing out a summons. Did I accidentally delete your message again? If not, what social unpleasantness brings you to the remoteness of Smallville?"

He could see Lionel try to peer into the shadows and sank back further in his chair. All on its own, his hand went to the glass of Lagavulin. Somehow, Lionel's presence was only bearable with a healthy dose of hard liquor in his stomach.

_No. I need to keep my head clear. Or at least not muddle it up even more._

Lionel flashed him one of his artificial little smiles. "Can a father not visit his son when he feels like it?"

Lex tilted his head. "Why, of course you can, Dad. I didn't know you ever felt like it. But you must agree that it's a little out of your way. Weren't you in Washington this afternoon? Or did I misread your schedule?" _Yes, Dad. I hacked your account again. Aren't you proud of me?_

But Lionel would not be baited. He just smiled again, and calmly walked up to the liquor cabinet—which was about ten feet from where Lex was sitting in the shadows. His eyes, pupils now dilated and used to the low light, effortless pierced the gloom.

Lex, moving as casually as he could with five inches of whiskey attacking his liver, stood up and moved around the desk, where he leaned against the edge. He was now brilliantly silhouetted against the lamp in the corner. Lionel frowned. It was only a dip of his left eyebrow, but it was a frown, and Lex's polite fuck-you smile widened a little.

Lionel poured himself a glass. "I…ah…saw you on television, Son," he said.

"You did? Can't have been an interesting meeting, then, if you were watching the news."

"In case you hadn't noticed," Lionel said, strategically sauntering towards the hearth, "they've been showing it every hour since three o' clock. I'd long concluded my meeting—which was very fruitful, by the way."

Lex edged towards his chair again. He picked up a stack of wholly uninteresting papers and slowly put them in his desk drawer, making sure to turn the key twice before pulling it out and putting it in his pants pocket. He shot his father a brilliant smile.

"I'm glad to hear it, Dad. So, you're here to discuss the Washington chicken factory, then? In person. I thought you would be able to handle that by yourself."

Both of Lionel's eyebrows quivered. "Lex!" he snapped.

Lex almost, but not quite, giggled. Being drunk was actually quite nice. It was even easier to trade civil insults with his father this way. He sobered up a little when he suddenly found Lionel uncomfortably close, made a slow twirl around his chair and ended up next to the liquor cabinet.

"What is it, Dad? Surely you can't have been alarmed about my appearance on the news? After all, I'm one of their most frequent guests. Just like you, _in your heydays_."

Lionel smiled. Oh hell, no, that was wrong. Why was he smiling? That last bit was pretty nasty, he was half a desk away and Lex was still in the shadows, so WHY WAS HE SMILING LIKE THAT?

"Ah Lex," Lionel purred. "you know how filled I am with parental pride every time you appear on TV, even if it is because you've managed to…ah…shall we say, mess up again?"

"I," Lex spat before he could reign himself in, "had nothing to do with that girl's abduction!"

"Of course you haven't," Lionel leered. "What makes you think I think you do?"

"_Dad_…"

"But you have been hiding something from me. And I dislike finding out through television, Lex." With that, his long, thin finger shot out and turned on the lamp on Lex's desk. Light flooded the room, reflecting on the crystal of the liquor cabinet, on the antique glasses, and on Lex's very red, very present hair.

Lex squashed his first reaction, which was to fling up his hands and scream, and stood stock still, like a cat caught in the headlights of a car, trying to look impassive. He wondered if he'd feel any less embarrassed if he'd been blond, or dark, but with the way his father was studying him he didn't think it'd have made a big difference.

So this is how lab rats feel…The sheer insight this experience is giving me! 

"You know," Lionel said calmly. "I could just have turned on the big lights. There's a switch by the door." He smirked. Lex was better at smirking, but Lionel wasn't half bad himself. "Ah Lex, you should know better than to think you can keep secrets from me. I always find out in the end."

"I know. Well done, Dad," Lex conceded. All right, he'd lost his first gambit, but he wouldn't go down without a fight. "You've done a great job this time. Seeing me on television…I doubt anyone would have thought of that. Do you think anyone else might have noticed?"

"Don't be coy with me, Son." Lionel skirted the desk. Lex considered dodging away again, but decided it wasn't worth the humiliation. But as Lionel drew nearer, Lex's heart sped up, and he clenched his hands to fist to keep from bolting. The look in his father's eyes…he'd seen that look before. Wonder. Amazement. Lionel wasn't amused, he was fascinated.

Lex flinched as his father's hands reached out and very, very gently cupped his head, as he'd done when Lex had been small. He stroked his thumbs upwards, against the growth, and smiled.

"I'd forgotten how truly red you were," he murmured.

For the first time in twenty years, Lex felt his hair stand on end. "What?" he spat hoarsely, "no lock of Junior's hair in a locket? Nothing to remind you of what your son looked like before he became a freak? I'm shocked, Dad. Didn't you always say mine was just like Mom's? How could you possibly have forgotten, then?"

"Lex…" And there it was again, just like after Lex had told him that it had been Lilian and not him that had killed baby Julian. That _look_. He couldn't really identify it; regret? Kindness. Guilt and compassion. Something tender and almost loving, something _fatherly_…and it tore gaping holes in Lex's soul.

"Well," he said. His voice wasn't cooperating; it came out as a whisper. "You've seen it. Was it what you expected it to be?"

"I hadn't expected anything," Lionel said softly. He was still caressing Lex's scalp, fingers moving oh so soft and gently. "How…how did this happen?"

"I don't know. But the moment I find out I'll undo it."

"Undo it? But Lex, this is…" He stopped and looked away from Lex's angry smile.

Lex pushed his father's hands away and took a step back. He needed space to breathe. The room was spinning again.

"This is what, Dad? My one chance to not be a freak anymore? Your one opportunity to have a normal son?"

"That is not…"

"It isn't? Then what is it? I can assure you I didn't choose this to happen." He bit his tongue. _Don't speak. Don't give him any opportunity to get under your skin_. Lex was shaking, and Lionel was STILL watching him with that tender, satisfied look in his eyes. Lex tried to think of something cutting, something really horrible to say to get rid of that sickening look, but the inside of his head was sloshing against the cave of his skull like whiskey in a glass. _Slop, slop, slop._

Lionel regarded him from where he was leaning against the desk, arms crossed over his chest. He, as well, was waiting for Lex's attack; when it wasn't forthcoming his eyebrows rose again.

"Are you quite alright, Lex? You seem a little…unsettled." He reached out for his untouched glass. If Lex was unsettled, Lionel was settling in.

"Unscheduled visits sometimes have that effect on me," Lex countered.

"Really? You always were so very adaptable. Are you tired, perhaps? You have been working so hard these last months…"

"Stuff it, Dad," Lex sighed. It didn't come out quite the way he wanted it to, drained rather than snappish, and suddenly he was more than ready to give up on this little game.

"Stuff it?" Lionel said incredulously. Ah yes, it was a Chloe word, not the kind of expression one used when verbally battling one's father. "_Stuff it_? Is that the language you're resorting to these days?"

"Yes, Dad," Lex said wearily, "That's the kind of language I'm using nowadays. It's modern speak for conveying the message to you that I'd really like you to leave. Are you being driven or was your eagerness to pet my hair so great you left your chauffeur behind?"

"Why the inhospitality, Son?"

Lex plucked the glass out of his father's hand. "Then you shouldn't drink."

"You do look tired. Are you sleeping well? With your fragile psyche, perhaps you should…"

"And perhaps you should just leave!" Lex said forcefully. "You've worn out your welcome by…" he checked his watch. Lionel had been in for a whopping 10 minutes. It felt like 10 hours. "Fifteen minutes. I have a lot to do, Dad. I'm sure you can find your own way out."

The stood staring at each other for almost a minute, neither refusing to budge, both showing blank faces with tightly drawn mouths. The one thing that was probably good about his having hair, Lex thought, was the fact that the jumpy vein on his temple was now hidden. It was doing a right little dance at the moment.

Finally, Lionel nodded. "If you wish. I wouldn't want to keep you from your work, of course."

"You've always been a considerate man, Dad."

The Look entered his father's eyes again. "Lex," he began, unspoken promises and apologies and reconciliation proposals making the name sound like a plea.

"Good night, Dad," Lex said with finality. If Lionel wasn't going to leave in the next two minutes he would walk out himself. It was either that or end up sobbing on his father's knee. But Lionel did leave. He went with an air of triumph, as he well should because he had most certainly won this bluff, but he did go.

"Good night, Lex. Sleep well."

Lex answered with a bland smile. The moment Lionel closed the door, Lex fell back into his chair. He still had his father's full glass in his hand; without conscious thought he brought it to his lips and emptied it in two great gulps. It burned like a son of a bitch and made him cough, but at least it quieted the shivers running up and down his body. His arms and legs were still aching with tension.

"Jesus," he muttered, staring at his quivering fingers with disgust, "you're so pathetic. It really is no wonder he despises you."

He dropped his glass for the second time in four days when his phone went off. Was that another side effect of alcohol? Mouse-like hyper-alertness?

"For fuck's sake, Amy, where the hell are you?" He answered his phone and was greeted by the blessedly calm, cool, professional voice of his PR manager.

"Lex? It's Mary. Sorry for calling you this late but I wanted to give you your updated schedule for tomorrow."

Lex stifled a moan. Interviews. Lovely. "Ok, what did you plan for me?"

She laughed at the sound of his voice, but only very briefly. Unlike Chloe, Mary never laughed at him. Unlike Chloe, Mary would never find Lex on the other end of a phone at midnight begging for a therapeutic cup of coffee.

"I scheduled three interviews; one with the _Metrophile_ at four…"

"Why the _Metrophile_?"

"They supported you at the start of the whole LuthorCare business."

"Right, so they did. Who's doing the interview?"

"Manfred Paige."

"He's a twat," Lex grumbled. "I'm not going to spend an hour with him. Am I?" he asked. Mary immediately reassured him.

"No. He's only got 30 minutes. Then you have a quarter of an hour to change your tie before Dickins of the _Journal_ arrives. _The Inquisitor_ wanted an interview as well, but I blew them off."

"Well done, Mary."

"I wouldn't let them get within an arm's length distance of you, sir," Mary said. She was rather protective at times—and very good at keeping persistent journalists at bay. One of the reasons why Lex employed her instead of a drop-dead gorgeous blonde.

"What about the _Planet_? Don't tell me they haven't been calling you senseless."

She sighed. "Oh, they have. They're bringing an entire camera team, too. You're scheduled to meet Chloe Sullivan at five thirty. Am I correct when I assume you're in Smallville now, and would like to conduct the interviews there as well?"

"You are correct indeed. Twice." He lay his head against the back of his seat and closed his eyes. Five thirty…he might take her out to dinner afterwards. Or have something prepared here. Have her boost his ego a little, he could certainly do with that.

"This interview," he murmured. "It's only about LuthorCare, the treatment, and the girl's disappearance, right? If they start asking questions about my hair, I can throw them out."

Mary made a disappointed sound. "And here I was hoping you were going to tell me all about that. I think it looks lovely, and it's such a nice color. Why didn't you let it grow before?"

Lex barked out a laugh. Well, someone hadn't done her homework! _I've been untreatably bald since I was nine, bitch. Pay attention._ "I hate pigtails," he said gravely. "Thanks for the update. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

"Pig…tails…" Mary stuttered. Lex hung up on her the moment he heard her burst into peals of laughter, and smiled. At least someone was happy.

His hand, still shaking a little, though it couldn't have anything to do with nerves, hung uncertainly above his laptop. He really should check his mail. Wong was bound to have answered his mail, and he was expecting an update from Tippitt, as well as the end-of-year figures from several LuthorCorp plants, and there was probably he hadn't noticed in that security cam vid…

But his head still hurt, his throat was raw, and his mind was moving so slow he was wondering whether he hadn't phased into some sort of lesser being. A slug, or something. Maybe he should take his father's advice for once and go to bed early. Tomorrow was another day.

Lex got up, swayed dizzily for a few seconds, and left the study.

TBC


	6. Chapter 6

Yay! New year's reviews! Thanks, people, keep em coming, feed the needy author : ) Happy New year to everyone! I was hoping this would be a very short piece and add more of the Chlex I was planning, but I got kind of caught up in writing Lois. And this craving for pizza I had  Anyway, I'll try to update more soon. On with it:

Six: In which two cousins have pizza 

'You cheating fuck'

No, Chloe thought, and deleted what she had written, can't start like that.

'Dear Mister Smith'

"Hell no, lying bastard."

'Mister Smith,' That was good, nice and neutral. 'I have run your papers through my associates at several medical institutions and would like to run you through now.'

"No, that last bit has to go." She chewed on a stray lock of hair.

'I am happy to say that your accusations are unfounded. LuthorCare is not experimenting on these kids, at least not with malicious intent. I do not know what made you believe this was the case, but I can tell you one thing, you son of a bitch, that if you want to blackmail Lex, you'll have to come up with something better.'

Chloe reread her note, sighed, and edited it. She thought of something else to write, perhaps something that would tell him in a subtle but clear way that she thought he was utterly despicable. But that might scare him off, and she didn't want Smith to just disappear. Because there was something about him that…stank. Maybe he hadn't counted on her knowing someone like Janey Metlock, who could tell her straight away that the file was harmless. Or maybe he was misled by someone himself. Still, she was sure that he could have found someone to interpret the numbers—but then why had he added those little notes?

No, he'd tried to put her up against Lex by feeding her legit illegally acquired facts, she was certain of it. But then, why choose her? He'd told her he wanted her to dig deep to find the truth, but all she had to do was scratch the surface and find that while illegal, LuthorCare's treatment was indeed for the best of the children. Yes, she could lawfully incriminate the corporation by publishing these papers, but with the cancer treatment finally successful, there was a bigger chance of LuthorCorp getting a better name because of it, than a lawsuit.

Then why was she so convinced that something more was going on? Smith must have known he was providing false and misleading comments. Why would he do that? To see whether she would really check? To test her integrity? Or was it something else?

When he talked about Lex, his eyes had glittered with hatred. And he'd said he knew one of the kids that died of cancer. But if he got those files from someone who was working at LuthorCorp and had some knowledge about the experiments, how could he then gotten the idea that Lex was harming the children? He wasn't. He was saving them. Anyone knowing anything about Kryptonite must know that. Yes, it was illegal because they hadn't received official permission to use the meteor, but…

"Aargh. What the hell do you want from me, Piggy-eyes?"

She was saved from further brain crackers by the first twelve notes from Mission Impossible and dived for her phone as if it were a double moccaccino with whipped cream. "Chloe!"

"Chloe, it's me, Lois. Do you have a TV in your near vicinity?" Lois had that high, slightly breathy quality to her voice she always got when she was excited about something.

Chloe looked up. There were three flat screens hanging from the ceiling. They were situated on exactly the same place on every floor of the Daily Planet from the basement up. The eight o' clock news was on and that bimbo from Channel Two was fluttering her eyelashes to the off-screen person she was speaking to.

"Is this a trick question? You know…"

"He's got HAIR!! Watch it, they'll probably show him again, yes, there his is! Look! Look at him!"

Chloe held the phone away from her ear and listened carefully. Yes, she could hear Lois one floor down. Working late, just like Chloe. Working alone, by the sound of it; someone would have shut her up if anyone else was still present.

While Lois raved on about the why and how about the sudden appearance of 'red grass on that white cue ball', Chloe watched the screen and felt a slow smile spread her lips. She completely missed what Lex was speaking about and just enjoyed the view. She'd been right. He was rather adorable. He didn't look at all ridiculous. She couldn't understand why she hadn't ever deduced that he'd had to have been a red head. With that pale skin with the dusting of tiny freckles that only showed when he got even paler, for instance if he got angry, he just had to be. The red fluff somehow made his face look softer, and surprisingly, very young. It made him **human**, she thought.

"How'd you think he did it, huh?" Lois was still going on. "Implants? I doubt it myself because why would anyone choose such a horrible color, but hey who knows, maybe he's just being eccentric. Or did he experiment with something, do you think? Maybe you can ask him tomorrow. He's got to…"

"Wait. Wait a minute!" Chloe said, as her cousin's words finally registered. "What do you mean, I can ask him tomorrow? Am I seeing him tomorrow?"

Lois laughed. "Missed your message again? Really, Chlo, and they'd given you such a hot little phone. You're going to interview him tomorrow."

"I am?" she checked her cell phone. It showed one missed call and a text message. "Oh. Ok. I am."

"I don't know why they keep picking you for that, though," Lois said. Chloe could hear her high-heeled boots patter down the stairs. "I'm sure if you told Perry you didn't want to anymore, he'd let you up. Well, maybe not, but he might send someone else for a change."

Chloe smiled. She knew very well why Perry always chose her to do interview the Luthors. Luthor Senior: she'd been tricked by him so often it didn't work anymore. He didn't frighten her anymore, and she'd gotten very good in reading him. As for Luthor Junior…Lex liked her. She never misquoted him, nor put him down any different than he was. Because she, in turn, liked him. The result was open, interesting conversation, in which he would let slip much more than he would to any other reporter. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement: Lex could trust her to publish the truth about him—as far as Lex was ever truthful, of course—and Chloe's rank at the Planet had risen from obituaries and advertisements in the cellar to interviews and a neat little desk on the first floor. And she had a column. On Wednesdays. It was called 'Sullivan's Lighter', and only those who had known her previous unpaid and undervalued job at Smallville High got the pun of it.

"I don't mind, really," she said, grinning at her cousin as she came sauntering into the room. Lois, unlit Marlboro already wedged in the corner of her mouth, grinned back so widely she almost poked herself in the eye with the cigarette. "He always pours really good wines."

"Psah," Lois spat disdainfully, still speaking into her mobile, although she was now less than ten feet away. "He can keep his Chateau de Mauvais Riche. I'd take a cheap Chianti over his fluid ruby anytime." She lowered her cell. "Speaking of Chianti, feel like going out for a bite? I'm not getting anywhere with this article of mine, and Clark isn't here to help me with the spelling."

"Sure," Chloe said. She cast one last glance over her mail to Smith, then shrugged and sent it. If he wanted to get back to her, he would. She was sick and tired of holding shouting matches with him in her head. It would be much nicer to actually talk to him and find out what he wanted. She turned off her computer. "Pizza?"

"Actually," Lois said, fishing for her lighter, "I was hoping for something more Italian."

"Pizza is about as Italian as you can get," Chloe argued.

"Not if you're talking about Shakey's, or Yo-Joe's. Those pizzas have never even seen real mozzarella. Let alone oregano. And they most certainly don't have any Chianti. No, I want my pizza made AND served by a tiny little genuine Italian man with a nasty moustache and huge amounts of oily, curly chest hair."

Chloe made a face. "Ugh." She shivered in her coat. Lois lit her cigarette two steps from the front door.

"That's what you say now, but you'll agree with me after the first taste. I promise!"

"So where is this heavenly temple of Italian ambrosia?" Chloe asked, shivering again. The winter was finally getting colder—just cold enough to freeze the slush on the streets and turn the entire road into an ice rink.

Lois blew out a huge cloud of condensed breath and smoke. "Juft awoumb ah cohnew of mimepeemime am feffenpee."

Chloe plucked the cigarette from between her lips. "What?"

"99 and 70."

"Ok. We can walk then." Lois opened her mouth. Chloe put the cigarette back where it belonged. Lois took a big puff and almost choked on a cough. "When are you going to stop smoking? I thought you said you'd give it up about two months ago."

"I did. I was weak. What can I say? I need a better reason to quit than just some…vague wish. Like a New Year's resolution, or something."

"That's what you said last year, and it didn't help you then."

"Change of subject?" Lois requested. "You keep buying boots and I'm not pestering you about that, am I?"

"That's Lana's fault!"

"Sure, blame the little princess."

"It's true! I'm innocent!"

"Ha. Does she pay for them as well?"

"Why did you need Clark to check your spelling anyway?" Chloe neatly sidestepped her fetish. "Even YOU must have figured out how to use the spelling checker by now."

"My Windows crashed," Lois grumbled. She shook another cig out of her packet, lit it with the stub of the last one and tossed the butt away. Chloe shook her head. "Swallow it and like it, Chlo. As I was saying, my Windows crashed and it wouldn't reinstall Word—in fact it wouldn't do anything but go prrt, prrt, krrrrrrrll, and then stop, so I've been using that dusty old thing in the corner, the one we only use to send mail to persons of questionable conduct with whom we don't want to be associated—or to download porn, in the case of Joe Darham and Buster Jennings; I mean, I actually saw them do it. Unless, of course, 'Deep Inside Tia Bella' is actually some kind of hacking program. But anyway, that thing only has internet and notepad, no spelling checker, and I kind of freaked out without all those red squiggly lines, so…" She paused to take a breath and a drag, "I thought; let's watch the news and see what everybody's making such a fuss about. I mean, there's this kid missing and all they're talking about is Junior's new hairdo. I'm sure it's just another one of his weird ass publicity stunts. Crazy bastard."

She huffed out another plume of smoke.

Chloe said nothing. Like Clark, Lois refused to see Lex as anything but The Enemy—perhaps because he had once told her that she smelled like an ash tray. Or maybe tasted like an ash tray, she couldn't be sure about that, but she doubted that Lex and Lois had ever come closer than the most formal of handshakes, if that. She knew better than to waste her breath defending Lex to Lois. Her cousin would just check her temperature and then claim that he had brainwashed her.

While Lois grumped about the Evil of Luthor, Chloe mentally rescheduled her Tuesday. The message had only read 'Next time, answr phone. Tomorrow Int. Luthor Jr. SV Mans. 5.30 w. Cam. Team. I'll mail. P.', but it effectively filled her entire day. She had to be there by 5.30, but it was always better to be at least fifteen minutes early to set up the cameras and stuff. So, a two and a half, three hour drive there…Make that three and a half with a coffee break or two and possible traffic jams. She had to leave Metropolis by one at the latest. If she was early, she could always look up some old friends—those unfortunates who had never left Smallville.

"Here we are," Lois said with a flourish, pulling Chloe out of her thoughts. She rubbed out her cigarette with the toe of her boot. A tiny, seedy-looking restaurant stood huddled away between a bookshop and a grand café. It was called 'Antonino's', and Chloe thought it was very well possible that the Godfather himself had founded it in his more desperate days. But as Lois had predicted, her reservations all disappeared when they opened the door and a truly divine smell of freshly baked pizza _with_ oregano and other home cooking, garlic and lit candles washed over them.

"Mmmm…" Chloe moaned. She wished her nose had taste buds.

"Nice, huh?" Lois grinned with pride. She flashed all her splendidly white teeth at the small, moustached Italian waiter with the white, stained apron who'd come hurrying from the open kitchen, his hands still white with dough, to lead them to their table.

Once seated, Lois ordered a carafe of Chianti and two _pizze Quatro Statione_—"Trust me, Chlo, they're wonderful, you'll love them!"—and settled into her chair with the air of a conqueror. "Tell me I was right."

"You were right," Chloe said obediently. She laughed and watched with delight how the Italian waiter poured the sparkling red wine into her glass from at least a foot's distance.

On the inside, the little restaurant was as lovely as it was hideous from the outside. About twenty people, mostly in pairs, sat in the cozy half dark, eating and talking. About half of the customers spoke Italian, Chloe noticed. It was probably a good sign. Red-hooded lamps cast a warm light over gleaming, dark oak tables, and lit candles flickered wherever the shadows threatened to become to dark. Peculiarly-shaped wine bottles hung from the ceiling, reflecting the light in odd patterns. The walls were painted in yellowish hues with a few faded frescoes tucked away in the corners. There was one small statue of some doubtlessly famous Ancient hero, a man with a tiny dick but pectorals to die for. Chloe sighed with pleasure and took a sip of wine, letting all of her frustration with Mister Smith drain away.

"So," she said while they sat there waiting for their pizzas to arrive, "What have you been up to? I mean, it's past eight and you were still up there typing your little fingers off. Without a spelling checker NOR Clark, no less. What's gripped you this time?"

Lois snorted. "Apart from the usual Rape and Incest stories Perry usually drops on my plate?—Why's he do that, anyway? It's not like it's _nice_ to interview girls who've been assaulted by their gym teacher, but whenever I hold out my hand for a subject—like an opening of some building, or a museum, or something else remotely pleasant he gives me another fifteen-year-old with a ripped hymen as if it's my UB40."

"I think he thinks you can handle it," Chloe said. "I couldn't. Neither can most of the men. You've got a way to reassure them, help them, convince them to sue AND get a story out of it as well."

Chloe hadn't been able to do that. She'd done one incest victim interview and spent half an hour hugging the girl, crying just as hard as her. Then she'd taken a knife and had almost unmanned the girl's uncle, who'd raped her from the day she turned eight. Only Clark's speedy intercession had saved her from spending the prime of her life in jail. Lois was much better with those kind of things. She published their stories with an objective tone of voice—although her reports on a criminal sent to jail because of her intervention were always darkly exultant.

Her macho cousin took a gulp of wine; as if she were doing shots instead of drinking wine. "At the moment, I'm investigating a man called Tippitt. Do you remember that whole business with that rice company a few weeks ago?"

"Orizon, yes. Their brand new CEO was murdered."

"Uhuh, and right after they had finally decided to sell to HealthFood, ex-convict!Luthor's little pet project with the blessing of his loving offspring. Poor man; almost a year of vigorous business battle, threats, lawsuits and everything, and then when things finally go his way and he manages to get his foot between Orizon's door, someone shoots his trump card five times in the chest."

The waiter put a basket of bread and a bowl with garlic butter on their table. Chloe lathered a piece of bread with butter; it was soft and creamy but firm enough to be real butter instead of margarine. _I have to remember this restaurant._ Even though she was beginning to feel too relaxed to give a damn about murdered CEOs, she caught Lois' eager eye and asked, dutifully,

"And you think this Tippitt is involved somehow?"

"I have no idea," Lois said around a mouthful of buttery bread. "I only know that he suddenly showed up, and that no one knows who he is. I mean, according to my informant he registered as an employee at Orizon a couple of days after Mowett was shot, but nobody knows how or why. He isn't a cop. He isn't a journalist either. He most certainly isn't your regular rice monger. Must be a private detective, but when I tried to find out about him, I got an absolute zero on my computer. He doesn't exist. There is," she picked up her spoon and regarded it solemnly, "no Tippitt."

"If he doesn't exist," Chloe asked, "How did you find out about him in the first place?"

"Someone pointed him out to me, or rather to my contact. Who was it, the usual, some Smith or Jones or Doe…"

Chloe sat up with a start. "Smith?" _Could it be the same guy? If he is…Orizon would become a sister company to LuthorCorp…_

But Lois waved her hand and said, "I think it was Jones, actually. Anyway, this Tippitt guy is combing down the entire Orizon organization and then snap! He's gone. One day later another employee bites the dust. "

"I remember." The wine was still warm in her stomach, but despite herself her curiosity was piqued. Lex had been very upset with Mowett's death, and the woman's death only a week later had disturbed him to such an extent that he'd called her for coffee. At one in the morning. Sometimes she'd swear the man didn't sleep at all. "They found her under a pile of rice bags. They called it an accident—I remember thinking that was the most unlikely accident I'd ever seen. That was a cover-up if I ever saw one."

"Exactly, that's what I thought too. So then I sent…" She coughed, "I sent someone to check it out, both Tippitt and that woman's death, only to find that Tippitt had already left. Then it turned out that that woman…Savez, Rachel Savez, used to be Mowett's under-desk hussy and a truly interesting mystery had appeared." She bit into another piece of bread and continued in a hollow voice: "Who is Tippitt? What does he want? What has he found? Does he like martinis or is he a beer man?" She grinned and refilled her glass. "We've been following Tippitt around for some time now, but he's really good. He moves incredibly fast."

"What is 'some time'?"

"About two weeks."

Chloe sighed. Smith had contacted her only five days ago. Then she frowned. "But why are you following him at all? Why bother with him, if you don't even know what he's doing?" Lois usually didn't have the patience to follow vague hints. She was a hunting dog, not a falcon; she needed a clear scent or a bone to bring down the prey.

Her cousin shrugged. "I hate the unexplained. I believe he knows something about Mowett's murder—and I want to know who he's working for. If he finds out, I want to take the credit by publishing it—although, of course, I'll have to share my reapings. Do you want more wine? Shall I order another carafe?"

Chloe let her glass fill again. The surroundings were peaceful and her body felt pleasantly heavy, but unease stirred in her belly—or maybe that was hunger pangs. She hadn't eaten anything since a quick lunch at one.

"You should be careful, though," she cautioned, laughing at herself even as she said it. As if she had ever heeded any warning herself. Lois smirked, and Chloe stuck out her tongue. Still: "Two people have died. It'd be a shame if you or your partner would be a third. That would really screw up my Christmas plans."

"Oh," Lois said airily, "my little investigator can take care of himself." And there was something in her voice, some strange mixture of affection, envy, annoyance and absolute reliance that told Chloe who Lois' investigator was, as clearly as if she'd said his name.

"Clark!" she exclaimed, then hushed her voice as several patrons looked up from their meal, "You're using Clark to check out Tippitt!"

"_Using_ is such a negative word," Lois protested. "He suggested it himself. He's getting sick and tired of summarizing football matches. And you know how he reacts to everything remotely Luthor-related. Speaking of Luthor, do you have any idea how he cultivated that crop on his head?"

"I don't think…" Chloe began, but then the pizza arrived, and she forgot all about Lex. The pizza was at least 30 inch wide, very flat, and smelled so good she wished she could snort it, like tomato coke.

"Use your knife, Chloe," Lois giggled. "You're not very sexy with cheese on your nose."

Abandoning speech entirely for some time in order to shovel away at their meal, the cousins abandoned the subject 'work' when their mouths were empty for longer than ten seconds; they ordered another carafe of wine and talked about more mundane things—like the disappointment that was called 'Lost', how nice it was to watch the reruns of old Agatha Christie movies, what crappy weather they were having, the exploits of Lois' little sister and the General's reaction to seeing his youngest daughter's face on the cover of a Gothic Metal CD, and where to shop for Manolo Blahniks while still saving enough money to buy new clothes for Christmas. "Or maybe to just afford Christmas," Lois sighed. "They're lovely shoes, but I may have to give up on them if I have to choose between them and my Christmas turkey."

When the pizza was finished, Lois suggested tiramisu for dessert. It was, again, marvelous, and liberally doused with Amaretto. By the time Chloe and Lois had finished their coffee, they were both giggly and flushed, and when they tottered outside, waved a warm goodbye by the generously tipped waiter, tightly arm in arm despite the difference in height, they hardly noticed the bite of the wind or their uneasy footing due to the ice on the street.

"Oh Lois, don't smoke, you'll belch fire!"

"Don't be ridiculous," Lois scoffed. "It was only 5. You can't spit fire with Chianti. Now the original Russian Wodka, that's the stuff to use…Say Chloe, do you want to stay over? You probably shouldn't drive in the state you're in."

"State?" Chloe huffed. "What state?" She briefly considered staying over at Lois', then decided against it. Lois' apartment was a little like a student's flat—not because it wasn't respectable, but because her cousin did not believe in the benefits of tidying, cleaning, or not-smoking at home. Neither was she afraid of spiders. Chloe'd spent a few nights on Lois' couch, and quite a few of those nights had been sleepless, anxiously following the progress of some small, black, many-legged shadow on the ceiling and/or floor.

She grinned. "I'll manage. It's still at least ten minutes to my car; I'll be sober by the time I'm there."

"You sure? Yeah? I'll walk you to your car then."

"Clark's rubbing off on you; you're getting just as protective as him."

"Huh. Must be that helpless, 'please protect me!' aura you have."

"I'm not helpless!" Chloe said sharply. "I can take care of myself. And I don't need anyone to protect me!"

Lois glanced down at her and kept a firm hold of her arm when Chloe tried to pull loose. "Hit a nerve?" she asked calmly.

"No," Chloe growled. "Let me go."

"No. I know you can handle yourself. Not gonna change anything. I still hold the record dropkicking evil men and I, for one, don't want to find out you've been kidnapped by some crack-freak in the morning."

"As if I'm being kidnapped every other day," Chloe grumbled, but she relaxed her arm and let Lois hover. "I'm not Lana, for god's sake."

"For which we are all eternally grateful," Lois said, with feeling. "How would I ever be able to finish a story if she were around? Clark'd never find anything—he'd spend all his time saving her. I really pity her sometimes, you know. I really do. Blessed with such a face and the only people who want her are criminal nutcases of the Belle Reve kind, and the odd evil witch ancestor. And talking of criminal nutcases of the Belle Reve kind…"

"Clark wants her," Chloe cut her off.

And lo and behold, Lois faltered. Her mouth twitched a couple of times, smiling, but there was a strong hint of irritation in the curve of her lips and it took more than five seconds before she said, "Yes, well, we both know he's got a fatal flaw recognizing a woman who's actually worth anything, don't we?"

True words, certainly, but no longer consequential to Chloe. She'd gotten over Clark years ago. Ok, every time she saw his ass she wanted to bite it, but hell, every female alive would want to do that, so that was ok. Chloe glanced at her cousin from the corner of her eye. Could it be that Lois, Warrior Princess…

"Man's got biologically grown produce for brains," Lois grumbled, angrily tapping another cigarette from her package. Chloe hid a grin. Oh yeah. She recognized the signs of Clark infatuation, Lois-style setting in. Give her a few weeks and she'd probably start to physically assault him. The grin won out, and she giggled.

"Whap?" asked Lois around her cig.

Chloe shrugged. "Nothing! There's my car. Can I drop you off somewhere?"

Her cousin shook her head. She held up her almost empty packet of Marlboros. "Thanks. I need a refill of these. See you tomor—ah, no, you're going to Smallville."

"Right. Maybe in the morning?"

"No, I have another comforting and joyful meeting with Leslie Simms at the hospital. Teenage pregnancy is such a laugh…" She shook her head, losing the sarcasm. Her smile was warm again when she said, "If you see Mrs. Kent, say hello from me, will you? I haven't seen her in ages. And drive safe, the roads are a mess."

"Will do. On both accounts." They hugged, and Chloe got in. Lois waved. She stood on the slippery street with her long legs spread, her long hair and the smoke of her cigarette blowing around her head. Like a statue. Like a soldier. Irrepressible and unassailable.

Except, as it seemed, by Clark Kent.

As she turned up the radio, Chloe started to laugh.

TBC


	7. Chapter 7

There we are again! Thanks, as usual, for the lovely reviews, and sorry for the late update. This chapter just grew and grew…and grew. 

Oh, nice people who put this story on their alert list (I know when you do. I don't know why, because I certainly never asked to be messaged whenever someone does, but I do know)…leave a review, will you? Please? I'll keep writing whether I'll get them or not, but it's so much nicer to get a little stimulation.

**So,** **no more blathering and on with the story:**

Seven: In which Chloe and Lex get close but romance is curiously lacking 

Tuesday morning had broken with a clear blue sky after its customary mid-night snow. The trees were fluffy with snow, and ice crystals twinkled in the rising sun. One of the mansion's staff, a cleaning lady called Margaret, was beating the dust out of her duster, singing cheerfully.

Lex was sitting in front of the blazing hearth, on the animal skin (which he loathed but had kept around because his father had suggested not once but twice he get rid of the thing) with his back against the front legs of a loveseat. He clutched a mug of steaming coffee in one hand and pressed his cell phone to his ear with the other.

"So," said Lex, clenching his jaws together to keep his teeth from chattering, "how do normal people experience fatigue? Does it include headaches and muscle spasms?"

"Headaches? Sometimes," Dr Scanlan said. "Muscle spasms, not so frequently. Did you lift anything heavy, recently? Your muscles might have to get used to…"

"No," Lex interrupted him. He clamped down on his molars. He sounded like a pair of fucking castanets if he didn't. "I was fine yesterday. A bit tired." _And possibly suicidal. And drunk. And freaking out. And tired as hell of being normal._

He did not say those last things, of course, instead waiting and hoping for an explanation. However, the good doctor only made an inquiring sound, urging him on. Damn the man. Lex didn't want to talk about his failing body. He didn't want to list his weaknesses one point at the time. He just wanted to know what kind of pill to swallow so he could function again.

"Now my back hurts, and my legs hurt, and my head hurts, and I'm coughing my lungs out," he snarled, getting as much unpleasantly private facts on the table in one go.

"I see," Scanlan said with a hint of a smile in his voice.

"Well, I don't," Lex snapped, then clenched his teeth together before they could rattle out more than a very short salsa beat. "Please, enlighten me."

"How are your sinuses?"

"Excuse me?"

"Are you sneezing? Is your nose clogged? Do you…"

"No, thank god," Lex sighed. He coughed, swallowed, coughed some more. He sounded like a dog. A dog with castanet teeth. "I'm just cold. So what prescription can you give me?"

"Not much, I'm afraid," Scanlan said. "One more thing. Do you have a fever?"

"I don't know."

"Are you standing outside?"

Lex gazed out of the window. It looked cold and wet outside, and he shivered. "No, I'm sitting in front of the fire."

"Then you're running a fever," Scanlan concluded. "Congratulations, Lex. You're the proud new host to the Metropolis influenza virus."

"I have the flu?" Lex said blankly. He'd always thought flus an colds were mild afflictions. This morning when he dragged himself out of bed he thought he was going to fucking DIE. "But there's no…"

"Overflow of mucus?" Scanlan said with unreasonable cheer. "There's the difference between a cold and the flu to you. Colds generally make you feel miserable; they give you headaches and a stuffy head, but they don't give you a fever. The flu does."

"Fascinating," Lex grated out. "So what do you suggest I do? I have loads to do…interviews, meetings… Papers to write and factories to inspect, and I can't do it like this. Is there something you can subscribe to repress the symptoms?"

Scanlan, who turned out to be a doctor from hell, chuckled. "Lex, you can't suppress the flu. What I suggest you do is go back to bed with a hot water bottle, get yourself a pot of tea with a healthy dollop of whiskey, a couple of paracetamols or, if you're feeling very poorly, one ibuprofen, and sweat it out. This flu seems to run its course in a relatively short time; three days at the longest. You should feel fine in a week. If you don't feel better in two days…Do you have a thermometer?"

"No?"

"Of course not. You've never been sick before. Well, get a thermometer and call me if your fever rises above a hundred and one, or if it doesn't drop in the next two days."

"Two days?!" Lex cried. "I don't have time to lie in bed for two days!"

"Do you feel up to working now?" the doctor asked calmly. Lex seethed in silence. No, he didn't feel up to working. He hardly felt up to SITTING at the moment. "I thought so. Ibuprofen will help with the headache and generally make you feel better, but really, the one thing to cure the flu is bed rest and fluids. Make sure you keep warm, stay inside, and drink lots of tea, juice and water." He stopped. After a few seconds he asked, "Lex, are you still there?"

"…Yes." Even to himself he sounded like a whining child. "Thank you. I'll do what you suggest."

"You should feel better soon," Scanlan comforted. "The first two days are the worst. I'm sure that by the weekend, you're back to normal."

"Thank you," Lex said despondently, and hung up. He didn't want to go back to normal. He wanted to go back to sublime. This whole business was getting most dreadfully out of hand. Children missing and children dying. He himself turning hairy, stupid and sick, and no sign of anything of the above improving soon. What a drag. Of course it was almost Christmas, so it didn't really surprise him that his days were filled with gloom and misery, but still…this was one December to remember.

He sat there moping for a little longer, sipping his coffee and feeling sorry for himself until his Luthor heritage reared its proud head and forced him to his feet.

"Stop whining," it told him sharply in his father's voice, "and DO something about it. Luthors don't sulk! Scanlan said something about ibuprofen, so go and get it and get a move on, boy!"

"Right," said Lex. He reached out for the handset. At least he wouldn't have to go and buy the stuff himself. He would send Margaret to fetch his medicines and a thermometer, swapping two flies at once: he wouldn't have to show his face at the local pharmacy, and he'd also be rid of Margaret's horrible singing.

"Take pleasure in small victories when it seems you're losing the battle," he murmured to himself, then rang and gave his orders. It would take Margaret about half an hour to ride to town, get his supplies and return to the Mansion. He wanted to be at the plant at ten, so that gave the ibuprofen exactly 30 minutes to patch him up again. It had better succeed in that. If not, Lex Luthor would personally oversee a lemming-like mass drowning of pills in his private bathroom.

Chloe stepped into her little Honda at twelve thirty exact, just as she had planned. Punctuality was of the utmost importance, to a good reporter. Unfortunately, she had to stop again not two streets away from the Daily Planet because her heels were so high and thin they kept sliding from the accelerator, and she had to take off her boots and put on her sneakers. Even though she had brought the second pair of shoes with her for exactly this reason, it still made her sigh. It always looked so easy in movies. Why could Kate Beckinsale hunt vampires in a corset and five-inch heels, and was Chloe unable to drive in only three? It just wasn't fair.

However, the day was so clear and lovely Chloe quickly forgot her disappointment in her boot-wearing skills. The sky just outside Metropolis was bright blue with the occasional falcon trilling in the air, hunting for field mice or rabbits, and the thin layer of snow glittered in the sun. The Darkness piped cheerfully through her speakers and Chloe, remembering the man's outrageous costume in the video clip, sang along as loudly as she could:

_Faking joyous surprise at the gifts we despise,  
Drinking mulled wine with you.  
On the twenty fifth day of the twelfth month the slay bells return,  
Ringing true_

Snowflakes melt in hell  
That it would end  
Don't let the bells end  
Christmas time  
Just let me leave please

_Hmm,_ she thought, still singing, _it's actually a pretty sad song. It sounds so cheery, but it's all about hating Christmas and missing people._ It was the perfect song for Lex. Maybe she should buy him a Darkness cd and give it to him at Christmas. She grinned at the thought. Then again, he probably already had the song. Memorized. Possibly put the lyrics on his door instead of a wreathe with holly and pine apples.

Poor Lex. She'd love to invite him this Christmas, but since she spent it with Clark, Lois and Lana, like usual, she doubted anyone would actually thank her for such an invitation.

_Well, the weather is cruel_, she wailed, _And the season of love warms the heart  
But it still hurts  
You've got your career spend the best part of life's joy apart  
And it still hurts_

So that's why I pray, each and every Christmas day  
That it would end  
Don't let the bells end  
Christmas time  
Just let me leave please  


Why did Lex hate Christmas anyway? He'd told her that he did, but he never explained why. Some other traumatic family history? Perhaps she should try to get him drunk, one of these days, now he was less resilient, and get him to open a few mental closets for her. His were so stacked with skeletons that there was hardly any space left for healthy, red-cheeked children—or jolly Santa Clauses, this time of the year. A good early spring cleaning might just give him some space to gather some happy memories—to un-Scrooch him, as it were, and turn him into a happy Grinch.

_  
Christmas time, Don't let the bells end, _Chloe sang merrily, steadfastly ignoring the depressive text. Yes, she could make this her project. The 'Help Lex Through Christmas Project'. It had a nice ring to it. And it was for a good cause, and it might be fun too, and it might just absolve her from her selfish decision not to hand out presents to poor children this year. She'd done it for four years in a row, now, and she really wanted to have an ordinary Christmas this year. One with a tree and turkey and bad punch or eggnog instead of a presents-filled but empty office with only her conscience keeping her warm.

And this year, she resolved, as the Darkness trailed off and The Pretenders came on, she was going to have sex at Christmas. It didn't matter with whom—well, ok, maybe it did, but…yes, definitely sex. Whether it was with old exes or with newly picked boyfriends, she wanted to wake up on Boxing Day and find herself locked in the loving arms of some wonderful Mr. Big. And whether Mr. Big then removed himself after bringing her breakfast in bed, or pledged his undying devotion to her while pampering her all day was really unimportant. She was sick and tired of waking up alone with a hangover for company. She was a wonderful woman, damn it, and men should be crawling at her feet, begging for attention (according to everyone she knew, in any case) so all she had to do was bend down, close her eyes and pull one up.

"_Santa Claus is coming to town!"_ the Pointer Sisters exalted. _He's gonna find out  
who's naughty or nice. _Chloe, for some reason feeling guilty, abandoned the somewhat kinky picture of dozens of naked, writhing men in her head and sang along.

_Does imagining half your male colleagues, your befriended billionaire, your alien never-to-be and two actors naked at your feet constitute as 'naughty'?_

Chloe laughed.

_**S**__anta Claus is coming to town! _

_**H**__e sees you when you're sleeping,  
He knows when you're awake.  
He knows when you've been bad or good,  
So be good for goodness sake!_

"Dear Santa," she said, tapping the steering wheel with her fingers. "Please give me a man for Christmas. I don't care if he comes in a stocking. I've been a really good girl."

Then she considered. Perhaps she could combine the 'Help Lex Through Christmas Project' with her Christmas Resolve. After all, he was bound to be lonely. She could celebrate the evening with the Smallville gang and drive over to Lex's afterwards and find out whether he was red everywhere…

_You better watch out, you better not shout!_ the Pointer Sisters warned, and Chloe, grinning, pulled her mind out of that gutter. She obviously needed coffee. Soaring high in reporter mode she should be, not fantasizing over her interviewee. Chuckling to herself, she put out her light and drove up to the nearest roadside café.

She was just driving into Smallville, two hours and two breaks later, when her Daily Planet phone mewed. It sounded just like a real cat; Chloe had acquired the sound by holding the phone over a nest with kittens and pressing record. She pulled it out of its leather holder on the desk board. The display read 'HIM', short for His Infernal Majesty, also known as Perry.

"Sullivan!" she called into the receiver. Perry hated people who answered a call with only their first name, or even worse, 'Yeah?'.

"Chloe? Perry speaking." As usual, the picture of a huge walrus sitting behind a desk sneaked, unbidden, into Chloe's mind. "Where are you at the moment?"

Chloe looked out of the window, where the Talon just slid out of view.

"Smallville, sir. I'm a bit early, but I was thinking…"

"You can turn around," Perry grumbled.

"Excuse me?"

"He canceled them! Luthor canceled every single appointment he had today—well, any he had with the press. He's bailed out!"

"What?" Lex, as far as she knew, had NEVER canceled a press meeting. He thrived on them. "Why?"

"I don't know." Perry was pissed off; his voice sounded as if he'd gargled with gravel. "That cold-hearted bitch of his didn't specify a reason. But I'm afraid you've wasted a drive to that godforsaken…"

"Hometown," Chloe interrupted brightly. "I've spent most of my childhood here." She punched the air when Perry was silent for a long moment before saying,

"Ah. Well. In that case…"

"I was planning on looking up some friends if I had any time to spare." Chloe continued. "And now it seems I have lots of time to spare, I can see quite a few. I mean, if you want, I can drive back, but I won't be back in Metropolis before six, and since I'd planned to stay the night here…"

"Okay okay okay, fine," Perry snarled. He was a nice man really, but he always sounded like an evil stepdad. "As long as you hand in your column on time."

"Already sent it, sir. And the article on the flower shops, too. Oh, and sir?"

"Yes?"

"Since I'm in Smallville anyway, I might check out the Mansion. If he's here, maybe I can see him anyway."

There was a soft, scraping sound on the other end of the line. Chloe imagined the walrus thoughtfully rubbing one flipper over his two o' clock shadow.

"Yeeeeesss…you were childhood friends, weren't you?"

"Well, friends is a bit of an exaggeration." In Smallville it was, anyway. She briefly wondered what their relationship would be called now. Less than friends. More than lovers. Acquaintances that sometimes abandoned all pretenses and licked pasta sauce from each other's face. It was complicated, really. "But he might see me when he refuses to receive other visitors. If I drive by the Mansion just after dinner…"

"Good, good," There was a beep on the line; another call coming through. "Do what you can. I'll see you tomorrow morning." And gone was the ever busy Perry.

"Goodbye to you too," Chloe sing-songed to the tone, switched off her phone and, chanting along with another Christmas carol, made a U-turn back to the Talon.

It was strange, Chloe reflected, how little the town had changed, and how that little bit of change had made it completely, unrecognizably different from the town she'd lived in as a child.

The Talon looked mainly the same, but Mrs. Kent wasn't in, hadn't been in for weeks, according to the pimply young man who'd made her her double moccaccino with chocolate sprinkles and cream, and without Lois or Lana or her old class mates the place felt…distant. The chairs were the same, and she had managed to get her favorite overstuffed leather chair in the corner next to the window, and it smelled the same, but…

"I'm getting old," she muttered to herself. One knew that one was joining the aged when one started growing nostalgic over coffee-stained chairs. The students that still seemed to be the Talon's most fervent guests, all seemed horribly young. Much younger than she'd been at that age. God, they looked like they couldn't be older than twelve!

Oh, there was Jack Voight, from her own class. Chloe hid behind the jutting sides of her chair and spied on him as he ordered his coffee. She'd never spent much time with Jack, but he was good with electronics and had fixed her scanner a couple of times. Correction, the Torch's scanner. She remembered him as a rather weedy boy with a friendly face and very fair, tousled curls. Now he was losing his hair and was wearing a biker jacket and a goatee that made him look like a garden gnome.

She sighed, and stayed out of sight until he had left.

While she was sitting there, trying to feel like she'd come home but in fact only realizing that she'd left it for good, she called Manning from the camera team to make sure Perry had told them the interview had been canceled. He had. Chloe sipped her coffee. She found a copy of the Torch tucked away between a couple of magazines and risked losing her chair to get it. The new editor was an idiot, and the articles were boring. The only thing remotely interesting, a story around a young woman gradually disintegrating, reeked of cheap sensation, made-up evidence, and was crawling with grammatical errors. Where was the research, the evidence, the passion? It made her depressed reading such sloppy journalism.

Halfway her second mug (one thing hadn't changed: Talon coffee was still wonderful, and so was the pie) an old friend she did want to talk to came in, and they spent about an hour in blithe conversation, recalling the ups and downs of school life and Harvest Parties. Then, at five, Caroline had to go and pick up her child at the crèche. Yes, she had a daughter, a boy of just two and a half years old. Didn't time fly? Hadn't Chloe received the birth card?

No, Chloe hadn't. She watched Caroline leave, still stunned to find someone of her own age a mother, and noticed how Caroline's choice of clothes had hardly changed in the past six years. You really couldn't wear those kind of skirts anymore, in Metropolis. But here in Smallville they were obviously still the height of fashion.

Chloe looked down on her beautiful sitting boots, recovered once she'd left the car, on her 60 denier tights, her stylish little brown suede/ black velour skirt, on her low-cut black sweater that so well displayed the small golden fish hanger that rested in the hollow between her collar bones, and sighed. Again. Ok, in Metropolis Caroline would be the laughing stock, but here in Smallville, it was Chloe who felt completely out of place.

How on earth had that happened? Clark hadn't changed. Not much, in any case. Whoever set eyes on him still thought 100 corn-fed Kansas farm boy, and he'd never said anything about not blending in here anymore, when he went to see his mom.

"But Lana had it too, when she came back from Paris," she thought aloud, and somehow that cheered her up again.

Now she had to lose half a liter of coffee, and then it was time to meet with another friend. She wouldn't have been able to see her if she'd have had to do the interview, but now she could have dinner with Jenny before visiting Lex and finding out why he was playing hokey.

Dinner was nice, and Jenny was good fun, as she'd always been, but Jenny was recently married, and she couldn't leave her husband waiting. It was hardly a quarter past six when Chloe swayed back to her car, feeling oddly disappointed and more than a little put out.

Nothing was as it had been anymore. The town seemed oppressively small, the people superficial. She was ashamed for feeling this way, yet couldn't help thinking that here, in Smallville, time had stood still and nothing had progressed. Without the endless golden cornfields and beautiful countryside in the summer, Smallville just didn't have anything to offer. Perry was right. It was a hole in the ground, a twinkling, Christmas-lit hole in the ground.

And suddenly, no matter how ridiculous it was, she was acutely homesick for the town she was in, the way it used to be, not the way it was now. It didn't make any sense; she was happy with her current life…and yet…if only she could be fifteen again, and be editor of the Torch, running around chasing mutants with Clark and Pete and…

"And have a pair of brains," she told herself angrily. She wiped at her eyes, cursed as she rubbed mascara into her eye. Now that wouldn't do. She'd look as if she'd been crying all night and she had to look smart to impress Lex into giving her his interview. No more tears. Fresh make-up. Fresh deodorant. There was no time to waste on stupid memories or wishful thinking. Vigorously, she reapplied new mascara. Lex had better see her. If he wouldn't, or wasn't home, she would be forced to show her disappointment in some way, for instance with her key in the paint of his car.

Chloe glared into her mirror. There was no sign of melancholy in her face. If the mascara was on a bit thick, it only made her lashes stand out more.

There were lights on at the Mansion, and if she was correct, that was Lex's favorite red Porsche parked on the driveway. He was home, she was sure of it. Nevertheless, she spent several minutes collecting herself. How best to approach him? Call him to say she was in the neighborhood because his message came through late and get in on his guilt? Play it personal and act worried? She wasn't worried, just curious. Or maybe bluff the guards and say he was expecting her, trusting that he wouldn't send her away? He probably wouldn't. After all, this was Lex they were talking about. But if he really was busy with something else, something that was urgent enough to cancel his appointments…

"Cool, professional, poise," she whispered to herself, then snorted and picked up her kitty phone. There were no names in its phonebook, only nicknames. Lex's was Spaghetti. She didn't think anyone would ever connect it to him.

It took hardly one ring before he picked up the phone with a short, hoarse, "Luthor."

Chloe pulled the phone away and gazed at it in surprise before quickly bringing it back to her cheek. He did have this number, didn't he? Hadn't he seen it was her?

"Hey Lex, it's Chloe. I…uh…" She waited. The tone of his voice would tell her what strategy to use to get into his house—at least, she hoped so. His initial answer hadn't been all that forthcoming.

"Chloe?" He _was_ hoarse. And he sounded tense, if not unfriendly. "Sorry, I was expecting someone else."

"Are you busy?" Well of course he was, otherwise he wouldn't be expecting another to call. She ploughed ahead, "I, uh…I was in the neighborhood and I thought…"

"You're in Smallville?" Was that hope softening his voice?

She put in a girlish giggle for good measure. "Yeah. In fact, I'm standing right in front of your door. Your cancellation came through just as I rode into town." _Stranded woman at your door, dear sir. Gallantly ask her in, if you please._

"I'm sorry." Good, but not good enough.

"Why'd you cancel the interviews, Lex?" she asked. "You never do. Are…is everything all right?" Suddenly, she thought of all those poor little kids. What if he'd rearranged his schedule because of them? God, she'd never live down the shame if she kept him from helping them!

But Lex just sighed, and coughed. Coughed! Now she _was_ worried. And even more curious.

"Lex? Can I come in? If you're not too busy? If you're busy, that's ok, I don't want to keep you from anything, but since I was here anyway and I don't want to drive all the way back in the dark, I…"

"It's all right," he said huskily. "I'll tell Charlie to let you in. You can…" _Beep_. "Wait, there's my call. Just come on up."

She drove to the gate. It opened with a haunted house screech, and as she looked at the Scottish monstrosity looming, dark and threateningly, over the winter-bare garden a cold finger trailed along her spine. What a horrible place it was! Why didn't they put some lights in the trees or on the walls?

She parked her car behind Lex's, crawled out and crunched her way to the front door over the pebbles in the driveway. A muscled man with a bulge under his shoulder opened the door at her ring, and she was let in with a 'Mister Luthor is expecting you in the study."

_Well duh_, Chloe thought, but she upped her watts for him, and he was suitably impressed. She click-clacked down the hall, still knowing the way by heart even if she hadn't been here for ages. Darkness all around inside, too. Why Lex even returned here was a mystery to her. He'd once told her something vague about castles being fortresses, and how he liked being holed up here far away from the city…but that was just a load of crock. If Lex came here, it was either to have dealings with the plant, or when he was running away from something. So what was he running from now? The press? No, he'd assented to the interview at first. The Amy disaster, or the other kids? It wasn't like him to turn his back on something like that. So why then?

_So ask him, Sullivan_, a walrussy voice growled in her head. She hastily pushed Perry out.

First things first. She heard Lex's voice through the closed door of the study and, after a short knock, let herself in.

The first thing she noticed was the fact that he was red and fluffy, and a little shock passed through her. Somehow, over the evening, she had managed to forget that he wasn't all white and smooth anymore. It temporarily silenced her—which was fine, since Lex was still speaking into his cell phone. His laptop was…not on his desk but on the table in between the two black couches. A big, stylish tea pot hunkered down next to it, steam rising from its spout, and a decanter half-filled with golden liquid stood in the shadow of the computer's raised screen. And empty mug sat abandoned on the carpet.

Eh? 

Lex himself was not behind his desk, or walking around as he usually did while on the telephone, but sitting on one of the couches. Or rather, he was draped over the couch, the arm leaning on the arm rest supporting his head while he spoke.

Eh?? 

He wasn't wearing shoes, only socks, and despite the heat of the fire he had on a thick, gray cotton sweater, no tie or even a shirt collar in sight. Without the distortion of the phone line, the roughness of his voice was even more distinct, and when he turned his head to face her his eyes seemed strange and gleaming and dilated. Combined with the high color in his cheeks and the uncharacteristic slump of his body, it made things abundantly clear.

Chloe gaped. He was sick. He had cancelled his interviews because he was _sick_! She didn't know whether to laugh wildly or be severely alarmed.

"…Right. Right. Keep following him," Lex told the person on the other side of the line. He pushed himself to a sitting position and beckoned Chloe in. She sat down on the cough opposite him, still watching him with unabashed interest. The corner of his mouth twitched, then he cast his eyes down and went back to his conversation. "If he does, notify me and follow him, but discreetly, of course. What? No. No, you shouldn't. Stay out of sight." He listened for a few moments, nodding into the phone. His left hand kept rubbing at his temple, unconsciously, Chloe thought, and she winced in sympathy. "Yes, that's a good idea. You do that. And get back to me, will you? You've got my number; call me if you find anything out."

He flipped his cell closed with a practiced movement of his wrist and turned those strange eyes on her. "Hello, Chloe." And damn, hearing her name pronounced with his ordinary drawl but in that throaty voice did weird things with her stomach. "Sorry I made you drive all the way here for nothing."

"That's ok," she reassured him. He smiled.

"Can I get you something to drink?" She started to shake her head, _No, you just sit, I'll get it myself, _but he had already hauled himself up and moved towards the liquor cabinet, silently concluding she'd want the cherry brandy she always had when she came here. Chloe studied him as he walked; everything he did was slow, as if he were moving in slow motion. Even blinking took twice the amount of time it normally would, and once she thought he would fall asleep while he was filling her glass.

"Uh, Lex…"

His cell rang and he started, mouthed sorry to Chloe, opened it, barked his name into it. Then he bowed, brought his hand to his head and started speaking in the strange, shlupping singsong of Chinese. And then, Chloe witnessed, for the second time in all the years that she'd known him, Lex Luthor unravel like a badly knotted carpet.

She didn't know squat about Chinese. But she did know that pauses like the ones was putting between words couldn't be normal. He sat down on the arm of the loveseat near the hearth, eyes tightly closed, the hand that wasn't holding the phone pressed hard against his forehead, face tight with concentration. He spoke for about seven minutes, getting ever more frustrated, and when he finished the conversation he all but crushed his cell in his hand and whispered, "Fuck!" with such distress it really upset Chloe.

"Are you all right?" she asked again, and his eyes opened with a start.

"What? Yes, yes, of course I am. Just…there's very little distinction between the words 'daughter' and 'pig' in Chinese, and I'm having difficulty getting the right tone because of my voice." He smiled blandly, then suddenly bent double and began to cough.

Again, Chloe winced. It sounded painful. In mid-cough, the phone rang yet again, and Lex swallowed hard in order to be able to answer it. This time, it was his father—at least, Chloe assumed there wasn't anyone else he'd greet with an icy, if rasping, "Hello, Dad."

Speaking to his father drove him to pace even though his body obviously wasn't in the condition for pacing; he swayed dangerously when he rounded the grand piano and had to lean his hand on the hood to keep from falling over. He apparently cut Daddy off in the middle of something he was saying, snarling, "I haven't got time for this now, Dad!" and slamming the poor phone down on the piano. It immediately began to ring again.

"Shut up!" Lex yelled at it exasperatedly. He picked it up, hissed, 'Fuck you!" when he saw the caller's identity, and pressed the call away. Within ten seconds, it rang again. Again, he cancelled the call. After another two times the phone finally remained silent.

Lex leaned heavily against the piano, breathing fast.

Chloe simply watched. She'd seen him freaking out on hallucinogens, but even then he'd been more in control than now…but after a few seconds of breathing air, Lex pulled himself together and faced her with a wan but genuine smile.

"Sorry," he said. "Rough day."

His laptop made a soft, chiming sound.

"Has it been like this all day?" Chloe asked. Lex, dragging himself away from the piano, shrugged.

"No…just from about four." He smirked. "Nice boots. Did you put those on for me? You really shouldn't have." The computer pinged more insistently, and Lex regarded it with comical disgust. "I'm coming! Did you have dinner yet? I have…" He stopped, both in words and motion, between the two couches, and rubbed his fingers over his face. "What was I _doing_?" he asked, almost plaintively. "I was doing something, and then…"

_This, _Chloe thought with rising alarm, _is not good._

"Why don't you sit down?" she suggested, rising herself and pulling him down next to her. She made to put the back of her hand against his cheek but he pulled away and caught her hand in his.

He shook his head. "I'm _fine_. It's just…" His brow wrinkled as he tried to think. Finally, he threw his head back and burst out, "How do you _deal_ with this? The _sluggishness_. The…the stupidity! My freaking _brain_ is on strike!"

"Uh, Lex…" She shouldn't laugh, really. It really wasn't funny. But it was so comical to see Lex deal with what was obviously the flu in a typically Lex way; that is, to fight it and rile against it while the only thing to do was sit back and endure. She didn't like the way his eyes looked, though, all glassy and wet, and made another try to touch skin.

But he was back on his feet again, heading for the liquor cabinet. "I used to be able to do five, six different things at the same time," he spat as he splashed brandy into a glass. "Now? Two. At the most. See, I was offering you something to drink but then I was distracted by that phone call. It's hopeless."

Right, if he was going to be difficult, she didn't have to be pitiful. "Well, what can I say, Lex, men can't multi-task. You're not supposed to be able to do so anyway. Now women, can," she continued smugly. "And if we follow that line of thought, we can conclude that before Amy undid what the meteorites did to you, you actually were…"

"You say 'woman'," Lex said threateningly, "and I show you how well I can multitask with my Kill Bill prop sword, the poker, a flaming log and this carafe of brandy."

Chloe grinned at him. "Lex, you're all yak and no shack. You're hardly able to move. I could push you over with my little finger."

Lex huffed. "I'm suffering here, and you're talking about shack. You're a cruel, cruel…" He burst out coughing. Chloe grimaced as it went on and on; _He's going to rupture something, this way. _Finally she got up and went over to pound him on the back.

"That's a nasty cough you've got there, Mister Luthor," she said when the fit eased and he could breathe again. She rubbed his back in great circles. "Did you have it checked out?"

Lex gulped down the contents of the glass he'd just poured. "Didn't need to," he gasped, "Doctor diagnosed flu by phone and told me to sweat it out. I don't have time for sweats." He blinked at the empty glass. "Oh. Sorry. Force of habit. I'll get you another." He took a clean glass, but had to stop to cough again.

"Ok," Chloe said, plucking the glass out of his fingers and leading him back to the couch, "Let's forget about my drink and sit down. No, sit down. Turn your back towards me. Ok, sit still."

She cupped her hands and began to drum out a quick rhythm on his back, only hitting him with her fingers and heels of her hollow palms. Lex let her; he was too busy coughing his lungs out to be able to struggle. After a while, though, he subsided, and Chloe smiled when he made some inarticulate long-stretched sound that her drumming distorted into a kind of bleating. It seemed no one, not even grown men, could resist bleating when pummeled on the back.

When he hadn't coughed for almost a minute, she stopped, and pressed her fingers against the back of his bowed neck. Oh yes, he definitely had a fever, and a pretty high one at that. But he was smiling as he turned back to her, a strange, dreamy kind of smile she didn't think she'd ever seen before.

"Better?" she asked.

He nodded. "I remember my mother doing that, when I was sick as a child. I hadn't connected it to being a remedy against coughing."

"You were sick as a little boy?" Chloe asked. He gave her a lopsided smile. "Um. Yes. Why not." Lex rubbed his forehead, lost in thought. "Mine, too," said Chloe. "I used to get bronchitis from the Metropolis smog. She said it was to loosen the slime."

Lex stared at her. "Now that was a perfectly good memory you've just despoiled for life," he said dryly.

"I don't see why you're so revolted by a bit of slime, Lex. It's all human. Slime and snot and sweat and blood…I'm sorry you're feeling sick, but it's something we all have to go through."

He snorted. "I didn't. Correction, I didn't use to." He sighed. "Well, at least I was spared the phlegm and other…"

_Ping_, whined the laptop. In a Pavlovian reaction, Lex lifted the screen so that he could see it. The LuthorCorp Logo was doing a slow trot over a black background. When he moved his finger over the mouse pad, a password slot came up, and he typed something so fast Chloe couldn't see what it was.

"…disgustingness. Oh, for god's sake…" He knuckled his forehead.

Chloe snuck a look at the screen, and it was a testimony to how bad Lex was feeling that he didn't turned it away from her. What she saw was a list of names, several of which were highlit, and some of which were crossed through. She wondered what had made Lex moan like that; the names that were emphasized, or those that weren't.

_Professional reporter mode_, she thought. _Initialize!_

It was a bit hard with Lex sitting so close she could feel the heat radiate off of him. Unhealthy heat. Clark was always warm, even on cold days; benevolent alien heat, the warmth of the sun stored in his flesh like a battery. While Lex always made sure his hands were warm ("A cold hand triggers sensors in the mind that automatically conclude that the owner is either nervous, disinterested or in any other way inferior," Lex had once told her. "Just like clammy palms and dirty fingernails, and hands that don't squeeze when you shake them."), he usually was as cool to the touch as he looked. Maybe it was the remnant of her infatuation with Clark, or maybe she had, against all odds, some twisted nurse's instinct, but she could hardly keep her eager little hands off Lex's feverish skin.

_Focus_. She could always touch him later.

"What's that you're doing?"

"This?" He glanced back at her but didn't lower the screen. "It's a list with names from LuthorCare. I've put a few people on it to check alibis, backgrounds, family, the whole shebang…But it's going far too slow, and…"

He opened an email flashing at the bottom of the screen. Again, under her eyes. Either his brain had boiled dry or he just didn't care that she saw it. It read:

_We've had to separate three of the children from the others and move them to a secluded room. Their vitals are stable but very weak. The new Ct4-R treatments has taken some effect, but we are worried especially about Emmy Sittard, who has lost seven pounds since last Saturday, when her condition started to rapidly deteriorate. We…_

Lex closed the email; apparently he still read about three times as fast as Chloe. His entire figure was drooping.

"Emmy," Chloe said slowly. "She's one of your Cradle Cancer kids?"

Lex nodded. "I need to kill her mother."

"Let's pretend I didn't hear that."

"I do, though," Lex said. "If it weren't for that stuck-up bitch her daughter wouldn't be dying now." His phone rang, and an expression that was pure pain flashed over his face.

"I'll get it," Chloe said, and went to retrieve it from the liquor cabinet. "It's…um… Lucifer?"

Lex grinned. It was a bit strained but definitely a grin. He held out his hand. She dropped the still ringing phone into it and he opened it. "Dad," he said silkily. "You are not up to your usual excellence today. What made you think I would have changed my mind about discussing _your_ project in the last ten minutes? No, this is not a good time. Yes, I know that." He was squirming, ready to get up any moment now and start pacing again. Chloe, as she sat down again, put her hand on his back. His muscles jumped at her touch, then coiled back into hard ropes while he fought one of his little verbal battles with his father.

Chloe had witnessed them a few times before; once in person, two or three times by phone. Lex usually cut them short—armistice, he'd sometimes say with a smirk—when other people were present, and Chloe had gotten the idea that he kind of liked these little fencing matches, just like he liked fencing with epees. Now, however, as she listened to what he was saying, and the way he said it, and the way his entire body tensed as if it were a physical fight, she began to believe it might not be that way after all.

_Christ, _she thought, _I can't even imagine talking to my dad like that! Or him saying things to me that'd make me respond like that! It's awful! Poor Lex!_

Then Poor Lex said a firm goodbye to Daddy, studied his phone with half-lidded eyes, and finally turned it off and threw it onto the other couch. Chloe heaved a sigh of relief.

"Would you like some tea?" Lex asked dully. "I'm afraid I'm not much of a host today. Did I offer you brandy already?"

"You did. Tea's fine. D'you have a mug somewhere? I'll get it myself, Lex, just point."

She searched a cupboard for a mug and found one with a cow on it. When she whisked around and returned to her seat, holding up the mug in triumph, she caught Lex somewhat unawares, that is to say without his 'me cool' mask in place, and her cool, poised, professional reporter's heart turned to something soft and gooey because, Oh, poor Lex! He looked absolutely miserable. The mask clicked in place only a second later, but she still wanted to hug him and tell him things would be all right.

_Yeah, like he'd even WANT you to do that. He'd probably be horrified. _

"I hope you like jasmine tea," Lex said, pouring.

"I do! It smells lovely."

"Hm. That's what I thought this morning. After a gallon or two you'll feel different about that. I hope it's still warm enough. Honey?"

"No thanks."

"Whiskey?"

"Lex, is there anything you don't put hard liquor into?"

He opened his mouth. Shut it. "I'm not sure," he said, pondering. "I don't think I put anything in my orange juice this morning. It's doctor's orders, though." He pinched the bridge of his nose, mask slipping again.

"Why don't you go to bed?" Chloe asked gently. "You look completely done in. Didn't the doctor order that, too? Bed rest?"

Lex sighed. It ended in a cough. He reached for his computer again. "I don't have the time. Besides, it's barely eight yet. I should have…"

"Do you have a headache?"

Once more that twitch of the corner of his mouth. _I get it now,_ Chloe realized. _It's amusement at his own shortcomings. Oh my sweet boy, are you one screwed up puppy._ She put her mug on the armrest. "Put your head on my lap." Dilated eyes looked at her as if she'd just grown a second head. Chloe patted her thighs. "Come on, I won't bite, and it'll help. This was another thing my mother used to do for me when I was sick."

"You're hardly my mother, Chloe," Lex said huskily.

_Down, boy._ "I know that," she said patiently, and patted her lap again. Lex sometimes reminded her of a panther, one of those big, white ones, and weren't cats supposed to react to thumping sounds? Of course, he was more like a ginger tabby at the moment, but still. "Oh, come on. You didn't mind smearing tomato sauce all over my face and licking it off, I don't see why you'd be shy about putting your face…no, that was not a Freudian slip…your head in my lap."

"That was different," Lex murmured, but he did lie down and put one cheek on her thighs. Almost immediately he was struck by another coughing fit, sat up again, and coughed until Chloe really feared he'd bring up a lung. After that, she had no trouble whatsoever pulling him down again.

"Do you know," Lex drawled in a breathless whisper, "if I'm lying like this, I can see all the way…" She pressed her knees more firmly together, even though he was lying ON TOP of her skirt facing OUTWARDS and COULDN'T POSSIBLY see ANYTHING, "into your boots…"

"Bastard." She swatted his ear, but very softly. "You're sick, so act like it."

Lex stiffened again, but now she put two fingers on his temple and began to rub them in circles, and after a while he relaxed, his head heavy on her thighs. His eyelashes tickled her knees through her tights when he blinked. And now she finally had the chance to investigate…his hair.

It was still very short—too short to do anything but stand up straight from his head, but already it had grown long enough to feel more like a very soft brush than like stubble. A bit like velvet, stroked against the thread. His cheeks and jaws were very smooth, though; he must have shaved late in the afternoon, or maybe twice a day. She wouldn't put it past him. Hell, if she'd suddenly wake up with a beard, she'd shave it off twice a day, too. Most people smelled off, when they were sick. Lex smelled of shaving cream, whiskey and detergent. His face and neck were hot against her legs.

Still rubbing, she made an inquiring sound.

He made an equally non-verbose sound back, which she thought was affirmative. He didn't move, in any case. It moved her, to some extend, that he trusted her enough to let her hold him like this now that he was vulnerable—Lex liked to be the one in control of the situation, be it a conversation, an action, or sex. He was willing to relinquish some of that control, knowing that it was him controlling the forfeit of it, but only if he could take it back whenever he wanted to—but she actually thought it might not be so much a question of trust as of sheer exhaustion.

The man was a total mess.

The total mess cleared his throat. "Aren't you bored?" he asked sleepily.

"Not really."

"You can watch TV, if you like."

Ah, so he was comfy. Chloe smiled. "Won't it hurt your head?"

"You're working on that, aren't you?" Control. Freak. "The remote's on the side table next to you."

"Ok. I see the remote but I don't see the TV."

"Green button. Aim for the ugly painting with the half-naked woman on it."

Chloe did. The painting slid aside and revealed a 40 inch flat screen. "Neat," she muttered, impressed despite herself. Doctor Phil's untrustworthy con-man's face appeared larger than life, and she quickly switched to another channel. "Who's the painting by?"

"Some French guy. Don't remember his name at the moment. It's a copy, anyway." He jerked when Clint Eastwood rode in on a horse and started shooting people with an alarming din.

Chloe lowered the volume to a bare whisper and reassuringly stroked his forehead. She wasn't sure, but she thought he was growing even hotter.

"You sure you don't want to go to bed?" He just mm-ed, so she shrugged and got comfortable, rubbing Lex's temple with the fingers of one hand and holding her mug with the other. When Clint Eastwood started painting the desert town red, Lex shifted and moved one hand to her thigh—not to do anything interesting but to curl it in front of his face—and promptly fell asleep, increasing his weight with about 100 pounds, it felt like.

Chloe sat there, sipping tea, watching _High Plane's Drifter_, her mind calm and content. She wasn't sure why she was so happy with the whole situation. Sick people were boring. She always visited them, (and in once case opened her heart to him while he was unconscious, and had it kicked closed with a single muttered name) but she most certainly wasn't some caring Florence Nightingale. Considerate, that was what she was. Or was it compassionate? Maybe she was just dumb.

She changed her position; her leg was falling asleep. Lex murmured something, but settled down when she caressed his cheek. He slept so deeply she could hardly feel him breathe. It was getting late. Clint Eastwood had almost wiped out his entire town, and one of the antique clocks grated out eleven ancient-sounding dingdongs.

_Time flies with sleeping billionaires on your knee._

But now the tea had completed its circuit, and unless Lex liked large wet stains on his leather couch, she really had to go to the bathroom. Carefully, she wriggled out from under Lex and went off to pee; when she came back, Lex was stabilizing himself with one leg still on the couch and one foot on the floor, both hands leaning on the back, balance awkward after sleeping like that. One side of his face was striped red from where it had lain on her skirt, the other side flushed with fever.

"Aww, you poor thing," Chloe sighed. She almost didn't recognize him.

Lex chuckled a little. "It's a bit like…being high," he whispered. "Only without the ecstasy and the flashy colors. Had I known that before…"

"Let's get you into bed. Do you have a thermometer?"

"Everybody keeps asking me that," Lex said crabbily. "What on earth am I to do with a thermometer? Will it make me feel better?"

"No, but it'll tell me what your temperature is," Chloe said. And although she was feeling really, really sorry for the guy, she couldn't help laughing at him either. She knew men often tended to sputter and act macho when facing sickness, but she'd never actually witnessed it close up. Her dad was a bit of a wimp when it came to the flu. He never protested being pampered. Or being taken his temperature.

"I assume it's higher than usual," Lex said. He shut down the laptop with slow, clumsy movements. "I wonder when it'll start raining. If it won't soon, we'll lose the crops."

Crops. Chloe stared at him. Lex held his head aside and blinked in slow motion into the glowing remains of the fire. "Lex, sweetie, I think you're hallucinating."

"_Sweetie_?" Amusement crinkled the outer corners of his eyes, but the eyes themselves were blank and glassy.

"Sorry," she smiled, "it comes with the fever. Come on, beddy time."

"Chloe, much as I appreciate your…"

"Lex, I am going to put you to bed and tuck you in, and if you keep protesting I'm going to arrange a baby-phone and keep watch while you sleep. You're in desperate need of some TLC. Do you have any aspirins?"

Lex let her push him into the hallway. "Upstairs," he muttered. "But I already ate half of the package, and apparently taking more would have some nasty side effects…"

"Half of the package?" Chloe asked shrilly. Trust Lex to overdose himself on aspirin.

"Well, about eight."

"Aspirin?"

"Well, ibuprofen, actually. They really work wonders, though…" He opened the door of his bedroom, gave her a backward glance, shrugged and entered with Chloe in his wake. The room was nice and warm, but not as hot as the study downstairs, and he shivered.

Chloe lifted the corner of his duvet. Nice, silk covers. The old smirk passed briefly over Lex's face, and then he crawled into bed and let her tuck him in.

"There," she said, satisfied. "Now you just go to sleep and you'll see…" she trailed off and looked at the alarm clock on the side table. "Is this set?"

"Mm."

"What time?"

"Six."

She turned it off. Lex didn't bother protesting. Good.

"So what are you going to do now?" Lex asked, and she shrugged.

"I can probably get a room at the Wayside Hotel, or…"

"You can stay here, if you want," Lex said. "The guest room's always prepared for guests. It's a guest room, after all. You can stay here for the night. You shouldn't drive at night—it's probably snowing again. It always snows when it's dark." He blinked. "You can stay here if you want."

Chloe nodded. "I think I might. Thanks, Lex."

He smiled. "Thank you for your TLC. I think I like you better without it, but thank you anyway."

"You do know what it means, don't you? TLC?"

"Of course I do. Helen used it all the time. I came to the conclusion that it meant something different for her, though. Total Love Control, or something. Take, Leave and Crash. Or maybe Talk, Lie and Conquer. I don't know." He sighed. "I'm really tired," he said softly, and Chloe kissed his hot forehead, knowing he wasn't just talking about his current physical state.

"Go to sleep. I promise I won't try to pry into your business tonight, just to ease your mind."

"Armistice," Lex murmured.

"Exactly. You'll feel much better tomorrow, you'll see. Good night, Lex."

"Good night." He rolled onto his side and closed his eyes.

Chloe left his room and went in search of the guest room. The moment she left the room, Lex opened his eyes and turned on his alarm clock.

TBC


	8. Chapter 8

So, here we go again! Jen, thanks for the review. Oh yes, they're definitely not going to be lovey dovey : ) Maybe have sex like bunnies, if I can make myself write smut, but for the time being: mainly snark. In today's update, the Spaghetti Mystery will be, not revealed, but begin unveiling.

Eight: In which conferences are recalled 

Lex had a very confusing night. Most of the time he slept like someone drugged, but at two o' clock he dragged himself out of bed to water the two plants in his room, convinced that if he didn't, they'd wither in the draught. When he became aware of what he was doing, the fact that there was no draught amazed him almost as much as finding himself standing in front of the fern with a half-empty glass of water in his hand. He couldn't for the world remember getting up and going to the bathroom, but he must have done so, for where else would he have found and filled a glass?

Abandoning unnecessary irrigation, he went back to bed and dreamed fitfully of Clint Eastwood wearing Chloe's high-heeled boots, interviews with Doctor Phil, and Chloe herself, who kept patting her knees and telling him to get up. The following crazy erotic dream (which still included Clint Eastwood in boots, only he turned into a cat at one point and started painting the _Grande Odalisque_, Chloe in red body paint, and an audience of bald children who cheered and threw their hats into the air at regular intervals) left him sticky and baffled and strongly questioning his sanity. He'd had some pretty interesting dreams in his old days of snorting, shooting up, blowing and swallowing, but they'd never been about Clint Eastwood or Doctor Phil.

The scientific part of his mind wanted to study these dreams and find out what had triggered them. Unfortunately, the rest of his mind shut off before he could even give it the order to start processing the information, and he slept soundly until he was awakened by a coughing fit that lasted a full 15 minutes. At one point he started wondering if it would ever end, or that he'd literally cough himself to death. That would make a lousy grave epitaph: Here lies Lex Luthor. His lungs decided to abandon ship. On the upside, he did not die. On the downside, he was so exhausted he couldn't even get his eyes open when the alarm clock blared him awake at six.

He smacked it with his palm, told himself to get up and sank back down into oblivion.

Apparently he'd hit the snooze button, because five minutes later the alarm went off again.

_Go on. Time to get up. It's really time to get up. Get up._ He tried, but his body simply refused. His treacherous brain came to its aid by translating the beep from the alarm as the stamping of high-heeled boots, and finally it stopped, and Lex slept on, unhindered.

The third time the alarm clock went off, Lex determinedly forced his eyes open and rolled onto his back. His body felt so heavy it was as if the bed had half swallowed him, and getting out of it was like dragging himself out of a swamp.

_It mustn't get any stranger, _he thought, _being this tired after sleeping all night long._

All he wanted, as a matter of fact, was sleep a bit longer, like maybe a day or two. Just roll over, burrow deeper, and…

_No. Enough sleep. There's too much to do, and you've indulged enough, yesterday. _

_Yes, Dad._ Lex brought his hand down on the alarm clock for the final time, turning it off, and thereby brandished his glove at the world once more. _I challenge you, world! Come and do your worst!_

Now he was more or less awake, the bed was becoming less attractive; he didn't know what he'd been doing in his sleep but he was soaked and slick with sweat, the sheets were clammy, and his sweater and pants stuck to his skin in the most revolting way. What was worse was that his face felt raspy again, and that was just unbearable.

Lex oozed out of bed and towards his private bathroom. The headache had more or less gone, which was absolutely fantastic, but his legs and back were still stiff, and his knees were shaking with weakness. When he was standing under the shower and let the hot water soothe his aching muscles, he was almost surprised to note that he hadn't wasted away to nothing overnight. The body slumped against the wall was still very much his own, freckled, now slightly red-fuzzed in places, slender but well-trained frame… even though he couldn't even lift the shower gel without dropping it.

What had Scanlan said again? The first two days were the worst? Well, he was certainly doing better than yesterday at this hour. The respite from the headache was such a relief that he hardly cared about this annoying weakness. And his mind was clear again, too. That probably meant that the fever was gone as well, or at least lower.

"Fabulous." He shaved leaning on the basin because otherwise he would fall over, but didn't cut himself. He'd gotten rather good at shaving—as he well should, doing it two to three times a day. He looked at the bottle of aftershave standing invitingly in a corner, but was too cowardly to apply it. He finally got the Home Alone scene, now, where that pesky little boy screamed after shaving and putting on aftershave. He'd never understood it; now he did. After shaving too vigorously it did burn like hell.

After he checked for missed spots, he studied the whole of his face, and frowned. He hadn't looked into the mirror so often since practicing his sneers in his teens, and today's reflection didn't exactly inspire him. He looked almost as bad as that memorable _Primo Dies Saeta_, when he'd experienced his first hangover. Flus really fucked up one's imago. Thankfully, no one was going to catch a glimpse of his pasty complexion; he was still far too shaky to throw himself into the business shark pond.

Lex dressed in simple slacks and one of his soft lambs wool sweaters. Not purple, though. Purple, he'd found out at an early stage, really clashed horribly with red, which meant that half of his wardrobe was now useless. Annoying. Even if no one else got the significance of purple—the royal color, the color of kings, senators and emperors—he liked wearing purple. He stuck to grays and blues these days.

Putting on socks and shoes was too much of a bother, and he padded down to the study on bare feet, resolved to have breakfast there as he had ordered the day before, instead of having it brought up like he wanted to.

He was halfway down the stairs and was just considering sitting down for a little when Chloe came running out of the guest room, her hair wet, no make-up, with her boots in one hand and her earrings and fish-necklace in the other.

"Lex!" she screamed. "I overslept! I'm late—god, Perry will kill me! What are you doing up?" she continued, still on the same breath but without the panicky shrillness. "You're supposed to be in bed, sleeping."

"I woke up," Lex deadpanned. He tried to dodge her hand, but she unerringly found his forehead and checked his temperature. That must be some kind of control-thing women had, Lex thought. The compulsive need to slap their palms on someone's head when confronted with disease. "I'm feeling much better," he supplied.

"You still look like hell," Chloe argued. "And you're a bit warm, too. I'd stay inside, if I were you."

_You're not, _Lex thought, but after everything she'd done for him yesterday, he thought making snide comments wouldn't be fair. Absentmindedly he wondered how much of his memories were genuine, and how many were the results of feverish delirium. The body paint memory was most likely false. And the shoot-out as well. She probably _had_ let him sleep with his head in her lap, though, and the thought made him blush a little. He didn't think he'd ever had his head in that position and _slept_. His reputation was ruined.

It had been nice, though. He'd never lain his head in a woman's lap while that woman tried to stroke his pain away before either.

"Will you at least have breakfast?" he asked, ignoring her remark.

"I can't, Lex, I'm already late…"

"You could fly to Metropolis..." Fwak! Her hand was back on his forehead. He gently removed it. "By chopper," he explained.

Chloe's face was split in two by a huge grin of delight, but then it faded to a smile, and she shook her head. "I'd love to…but my car!"

"Yes," Lex said. "You'd have to come back to pick it up." He sat down at the table, leaning his chin on his fist, and tried to look inconspicuous. She was having none of it.

"What are you scheming, Mister Luthor? I know that look, and you're up to something. You…" She halted when his butler floated into the room.

"Morning Sir, Madam."

"Morning, James."

Good butlers were always called James. Lex had lured this James away from the Devereaux family with the promise of a authentic castle instead of a boring Estate, not to mention a salary that would have turned a lesser man into a short distance runner to accept. James took five days to consider before he agreed. James never ceased to amaze Lex. He'd never seen a more convincing butler: about sixty years old, tall, thin, graying, British accent, immaculate sense of timing and, most remarkably, the seeming ability to float instead of walk. Lex had actually checked for hover implants under the man's shoes, but it was an inbred ability. Or a very cool meteor power, acquired by washing one's feet in water with meteor dust.

As James drifted in with a carafe of orange juice, two cups and a coffee pot, Lex glanced at Chloe to see if she'd seen the extraordinary feat of his flying butler, but she was busy fastening her necklace and hadn't noticed. Pity.

"Breakfast, Sir?"

Lex nodded. "Toast and marmalade. Chloe? Even if you left right away, you'd still lose all your hard-won time in the traffic Jam between 46th and 57th, and you'd probably faint halfway."

Lex had fired his previous butler because the man, at an exactly similar moment, had proposed he make the lady some road rations, thereby spoiling a promising romance. James was so silent Lex's words seemed to echo from his emotionless face. He poured Chloe a cup of coffee instead. Kenyan Roast. Lex pushed a bowl with fresh cream closer to Chloe's right hand.

She laughed. "Oh, ok! I'll stay for breakfast. Jeez. Um, can I have some toast too?"

James' forbidding mouth folded into the kindest of smiles that gave him a very strong grandfatherly appearance. "Of course, Madam. Would you like some scrambled eggs with your toast, or perhaps sausages and fried tomatoes?" ToMAHtoes. Lex adored his butler.

Chloe waved her hands. "No, thanks, it's far too early for eggs and sausages. Toast and jam's just fine. But thanks for offering."

James' smile turned indulgent without becoming condescending; the smile of an old butler charmed by a young woman who'd never been waited on. He gave her a little bow and glided out of the room.

Lex chuckled. "I think you just seduced my butler." He coughed, and it still sounded like barking, but at least it didn't hurt so much anymore. Chloe, thankfully, pretended he hadn't made a sound.

"He's very nice, much nicer than the previous one. I always thought he was laughing at me." She took a sip of coffee, eyes closing in bliss. "His coffee's better, too. This man's, I mean. What's his name, James? He looks like a perfect James."

"Spot on," said Lex. He stirred his coffee. "You're sure about the helicopter? It's parked on top of the Smallville plant; I only have to make a call to have it here in a quarter of an hour. You'd be in Metropolis in under an hour."

"I can't. I'd really love to, but I need my car. Today." She sighed. "I have to attend a conference at two and hand in the piece by six today; I really can't do without my car." She fidgeted, calming only when James hovered back in with a tray of toast, marmalade, cheese and ham.

"Is there anything else you require, sir?"

Lex looked at the two white paracetamols tucked away discreetly between the puddle of jam and the butter on the little plate, and shook his head.

"No, thank you."

The butler bowed, turned and floated away, and this time Chloe had noticed.

"Lex…is he wearing roller skates?"

"No," Lex said while he buttered his toast. "He can fly. Don't look at me like that; you've seen it yourself. I don't know how he does it.

So why's Perry going to kill you? Surely he didn't expect you to drive all the way back to Metropolis yesterday evening?"

She played with her toast, hissed a curse when a lump of syrupy fruit fell from her bread and covered her fingers with sticky jelly. "I um…I kind of promised him I'd try to wheedle an interview out of you."

Lex couldn't help grinning. "I see. And instead…"

"Instead I watched you playing Don Quixote and watched High Plane's Drifter."

Lex frowned. "Don Quixote?"

"Well, you know. Charging wind mills…fighting the flu…Ok, so it's not the best of allegories but still…Not that I think you'd have said much of interest, yesterday evening. Since you were kind of out cold and delirious and all."

"I wasn't delirious. I was just tired."

"Lex, you were mumbling something about draughts, and it's December. You were hallucinating. It's ok. I'll just apologize for being late and accept his reprimand like a big girl, and…"

"We could do a very quick interview over breakfast?" Lex proposed. "You have a good memory, don't you? I trust you won't misquote me…" He trailed off as she gave a happy squeal and flung something on the table. It was a hand held recorder. "You were actually expecting me to say this, weren't you?"

"I was hoping you would," Chloe conceded. "But I didn't want to ask you because I wasn't sure you were feeling up to it." She showed him all her hundred thousand Colgate-polished teeth. "Thanks so much, Lex, it'd really help subduing Perry."

"Every time I think you're really a sweet, innocent girl you surprise me with your devious manipulative nature," Lex murmured, not without admiration. "Very well." She turned on her recorder. "What did you want to discuss?"

"The children. There has been a sudden turn for the worse in the children's condition, and I was wondering what the status of that is."

Lex explained about the new treatment, leaving out anything that could be traced back to Smallville's fine rock. He then spoke of the recovery of some of the other kids, and gave his view that apparently, some children reacted different to some substance in the chemicals. He said that he did not know what had happened to little Amy Murray, but that all that was possibly possible was done to trace her current position. Then he coughed for a while, and Chloe turned off the recorder.

"Are you going to give an explanation for your canceling the other interviews?" she asked curiously.

Lex wiped tears from his eyes, drank a bit of juice and shrugged. "Busy?"

"Somehow I doubt they'll accept that as a valid reason."

"Life," Lex said as grandly as he could with his sore throat, "is full of lesser and greater disappointments. Do you have enough or do I have to give you some more empty facts?"

Chloe grinned. "No, thanks, I can do something with this. Now, if you'll just let me take your picture with my cell phone to make this…"

"No."

"Aww, Lex!"

"No."

"You're so vain! Britney Spears showed everyone her messed-up head after going on a binge, why won't you?"

"Britney Spears showed the whole world messed-up parts of her we weren't looking forward to seeing, and I'd just as well spare the world another unpleasant sight, thank you."

It came out a little sharper than he'd intended, and Chloe ducked her head to gaze up at him through lowered lashes. "I'm just teasing you, you know."

Lex sighed. Why, exactly, had he bothered to get out of bed again? It was hardly seven and already he wasn't able to produce anything even remotely suave. That headache? It was back. Like an alpinist it was slowly climbing along his backbone towards his temples, leaving little sparks of pain in its wake like climbing hooks.

Chloe surprised him by patting his hand. "You shouldn't be up. You're sick, and you look like you could use another couple hours of sleep. Now, if the only reason you're getting up is because you have to check that LuthorCare list, why don't you forward it to me? Clark, Lois and I are really good at digging through backgrounds. You should know, we've done so quite a number of times, and got in your way about half of the time, remember?"

"It's classified."

"Uhuh, and so was that medical information about the meteor rock. I still got it."

Her words took a moment to sink in. So much had happened in the past few days that he'd all but completely forgotten about Chloe's accusations. "You mean medical files from LuthorCare? Is that what you got? From this…Smith, guy?"

She nodded, entirely unashamed. "So you see, you can give your list to me. Hell, what am I supposed to do with it anyway? Write them all Christmas greeting cards? If it can help you find Amy back, what do you care?"

What did he care indeed. It wasn't as if there was anything on that list anyone could use against him, and he could trust Chloe not to exploit it. It was the Smith person that intrigued him, and his poor abused, newly non-multitasking male brain was already whirring on who Smith was, and how he'd got hold of any medical files from LuthorCare. It hadn't been anything that unduly upset Chloe, because if it had she wouldn't be sitting here having breakfast with and fussing over him. Still, if someone was smuggling classified information out of his company…

The little alpinist had raised the top of his head and planted a flag in the back of each of his eyeballs. Lex squeezed the bridge of his nose.

_I dealt with this stuff. Things like this happened before, and I'll deal with it again, flu or no flu. What did Tippitt say, yesterday, about that man he was following? Something about someone who called himself Jones. I need to talk to him, see if he can find a lead between the Orizon murders and LuthorCare…_

"Lex?"

"Yes," he said, pulling out of his thoughts. "Yes, that would be great. It would really speed things up—but are you sure it wouldn't be too much trouble?"

"Trouble? Pah!" she grinned. Then she grew serious again. "That poor girl needs to be found, and if there isn't anything else to go on, there must be some clue in the background of one of these people, right?"

"They are the any people who know about her ability," Lex agreed. "Actually, only those who either dealt with the children directly, so the nurses, the doctors, and the councilor, and those who studied the workings of their blood and the effects of the medicines would know anything about Amy's power. Together, that's about thirty people. I've checked out every single one, and twenty-six of them have a solid alibi." He smiled sourly. "As they were sick at home, on holiday, or working at another location."

"And those last four?"

"Still working on them."

"Shall I take over?"

"I think I can handle tracing the backgrounds of four more people," Lex said haughtily. "Decrepit and stupid as I am." He sighed. "I try to ignore the fact that each of them could have spoken with over a hundred other persons each. Or chatted about it on internet. If only we'd tagged all the children. That would have saved us a lot of trouble."

"Why didn't you? It's been done before, right? With that measles epidemic."

"Cancer. Have you ever seen what a shoulder pin does in an MRI? One of those kids has braces."

"Eew."

"Quite."

Chloe finished her coffee. "I've got to go. Will you be ok on your own?"

On his own. How sweet. He had five household staff members, including his butler and excluding his guard.

"Yes, I think I will be."

"And you'll forward me your list?"

"Which address?"

Chloe thought for a second. "My personal," she decided, and put her foot into her boot. Shall I write it down for you?"

She really did seem to think he had become a potato overnight. "I've got it. Thanks."

Unfortunately, she was in too much of a hurry to notice his sarcasm. "Great. I'll put Clark on it, and have a peep at it myself once I'm back from my conference. We'll find a link before…"

"Clark?" He was aiming for mild curiosity, but it came out as severely distrustful. Chloe smiled. She zipped up her second boot.

"He's really good at finding links and ties and connections. Relax, Lex. It's for a good cause, so he won't use it to attack you."

"My soul soars with relief."

"Don't fly too high." She looked like she was going to hug him or kiss him, but finally settled for a fluttering wave of her hand. "I really must run. Good…um…I'll call you later, ok?"

Lex only smiled. When she turned around and tottered to the door—she looked gorgeous in those clothes, but she really couldn't walk on those heels—he called her name and she looked around.

"Yes?"

"Thank you. For…well. Thanks."

Thousand watt blinked back at him. "You're welcome, sweetie." And she was gone.

The drive back to Metropolis was filled with song and phone calls. She cranked up the sound of her radio, flooding herself with the spirit of Christmas, then turned it down when the clock struck, or rather, clicked soundlessly to eight thirty, to call first Perry, to apologize for being late but mollifying him with a short but exclusive little interview.

Then she called Jimmy to ask if her schedule had changed—it hadn't—and to chat for a bit, but then Lois called her to ask if she could pick up bagels and coffee for lunch since she wasn't able to leave the office and Clark wasn't around.

Finally, her neighbor called to ask if she'd gone on holiday and whether she should take care of Chloe's plants. Her neighbor was a sweet old lady called Sondra Winter, and she had adopted all the plants in the flat as her own. Chloe had five plants: two ferns, an orchid (a present from Lana, who had a good taste but little sense for practicality, at Chloe's house-warming party), a never flowering Camellia and a cactus roughly shaped like Mount Rushmore. Mrs. Winter had saved them from certain starvation and neglect, and now felt that they were her responsibility. Chloe encouraged that sentiment. Especially the orchid had recovered marvelously after her last vacation.

She spent the rest of her journey beating along with the rhythm on her steering wheel, and parked her car in the underground parking lot at ten past ten. At eleven she handed in her interview with Lex, and by twelve she had read all her emails and replied to those that needed answering.

Mister Smith had sent an email as well, proposing another get-together on Saturday.

_I know_, he wrote, _that this Saturday is the last Saturday before Christmas, but I'm afraid I can't meet you anytime sooner, but he'd really like to explain things to you, since I got the impression you were feeling set up, somehow. I assure you that wasting your time is the last thing on my mind. You have to agree that, although I may have misinterpreted the data I gave you, LuthorCare is breaking the law. In the meantime I have found more evidence of illegal practices connected to LuthorCorp. See the file attached. Please let me know if you'll meet me at the same time at the same place before tomorrow. I won't be able to check my email for some time._

_Yours, Smith._

"Yours, unimaginative pseudonym," Chloe muttered, but she sent a quick reply back that she'd be there, and opened the attachment.

It consisted of a number of plans. The first was the blueprint of a building. She's seen this plan several times, in her father's work room in Smallville, on her school computer. It was the blueprint of the Smallville plant. At first, she didn't understand why Smith had sent it to her—it looked like any other plan she'd seen before—until one part of it suddenly snared her attention. The symbol of an elevator. And there was a second page. She clicked on the 'next' button and clacked her tongue as a large, high, almost perfectly square hall unfolded, blueprint-like, on her screen.

"Level 3." It was printed in large bold letters over the room, and she knew that this time, Smith wasn't lying, because Clark had told her all about that room. She even recognized the bridge structure that had given way and almost caused Lex and the shaking guy to fall to their deaths.

Next plan. Another building, apparently in Texas. A science center. It also had a level three, or at least an entire floor, the comments on the print read, that did not show on any other building plan, and that no one working in that building seemed to be aware of.

Last blueprint. Orizon, Kansas. Not so much a level as a sub-level or basement. Function: unknown. Contents: unknown. Points of entry and exit: unknown.

"Damn you," Chloe muttered, closing the files. "Where did you get these things?"

It was not against the law to have an unchartered room, as far as she knew, but it was to experiment on people in those rooms. The plans themselves revealed nothing, but it was another secret that she'd been trying to fish out for years—could there be another Level 3, a Lex-founded Level 3—and Smith had just got himself back in her good graces by giving her this little hint.

She found the LuthorCare list in her private email account's inbox, stripped of its logo and, she was sure, of a couple of names, unless Lex had shrunk the font; if she remembered correctly the list had taken up 7 pages on Lex's laptop, and now only covered only 6. But that was just Lex. She wasn't hurt by his mistrust, or his secrecy—hell, he wouldn't be Lex if he didn't have more layers than the proverbial Shrekian onion. She really mustn't forget to call him in the evening and mother him a bit. His confusion yesterday had been so adorable.

Chloe giggled, forwarded the list to Clark, put her Nokia in its little holder to reload, and went to have an early lunch with Lois before she had to leave for her conference.

She found Lois chewing on a wad of nicotine chewing gum the size of a package of Drum; she could hardly close her mouth around it.

"Lex me guess," Chloe said, laying down the bagels on Lois' desk. "You didn't have time for a smoking break?"

Lois' fingers kept on typing. From a distance, it was as if someone had sprayed a mouthful of blood over the screen, so many red squiggles were crawling under the words. "Yahhh…" she sighed. "I've got to finish three articles before five; one about that new tank they've developed—dad's wild about it, according to him it can do everything but fly; and one about that disaster at the metro, and one about ladidah teenage incest pregnancy—and now Clark's called me to say that he's breaking into someone's apartment, and that kind of makes it hard for me to concentrate on my report, you know, I really wish the guy had some consideration for my tender nerves, I mean…" she gave a vicious chew, "can't he commit breaking and entering when I'm sitting at home wishing there was something on TV."

"I got you a bagel," Chloe said. Once, she would have been worried to hear about Clark doing anything criminal. After his little career-change three years ago, though, and knowing how he ticked, she hardly batted an eyelash anymore. "Whose house's he breaking into?"

Lois shrugged. "Hopefully our man Tippitt's. If not, our contact's. I don't really care, I'm as interested in either of them."

"How can you confuse your prey with the one who hands you the shotgun?" Chloe wanted to know.

Her cousin spat out her disgusting lump of grayish gum, rinsed her mouth with coffee from the crusty-looking mug half-buried under papers and gum wraps, shivered, and bit into her bagel. "Well, since we haven't actually laid eyes on either of them, and therefore don't know what they look like or where either of them lives. Clark's tailed one of them, and is now, hopefully, copying all the files from his computer. That, or he's been tied up and stuffed in a broom closet." She took another bite. "I'll start worrying when he hasn't called me at three."

"You're such a mother hen, Lois, really," Chloe said sarcastically. As far as she knew, Lois wasn't aware of Clark's powers, but she was more convinced of his ability to Take Care of Himself than anyone who did—perhaps because Clark really could take excellent care of himself. After all, there were very few things that could hurt him, especially here in Metropolis, where kryptonite was only used in medical treatments. Still, Chloe always worried about Clark. For someone who was all but invincible, he sure as hell had a knack to find situations that revealed his weaknesses.

"He's a big boy, Chlo," Lois mumbled around her bread. "Besides, if he can't sneak out, he'll just flash those baby-blues—or greens, or browns—what color eyes does he have anyway?—smile that innocent smile and charm his way out. It must come in handy to be able to look so clueless; I know he's not stupid, but he sure does a good job of it sometimes." She daintily wiped her lips with a paper napkin, missing the smear of cream cheese on her cheek. Chloe pointed at her own cheek. Lois raised her eyebrows, opened her mouth to say that Chloe's cheek was just fine, then understood and removed the smear with her finger. "So," she asked, sucking cream cheese off her fingers, "did you find out why His Royal Cue Ball cancelled his interview? I heard you were stranded in Smallville."

"His Royal Fuzziness, if you please," Chloe said, smiling. "And I wasn't stranded, I was just parked. I stayed over at Lex's. He was just busy. That whole Amy thing…"

"Who?"

"Amy. Amy Murray. The girl that disappeared from the LuthorCare hospital. He was trying to find out who could have taken her. I got a list from him with personnel, do you think you could check them out for background, when you're less busy?"

"Not today." Lois arched her back (causing several of her male colleagues who lunched behind their desks too, to peek from the corners of their eyes) and rubbed her neck. "I already feel as if I need glasses. Tomorrow I'll be less busy, hopefully…I might have a look at it then." She regarded Chloe with sudden suspicion. "It isn't anything that'll make him better or richer, is it? Some philanthropic 'Lex is actually kicked puppies and hungry kittens' case of yours? I'm perfectly willing to assist in the retrieval of kidnapped babies, but like hell I'm going to waste my time on furthering that overgrown lollipop."

Chloe assured her it was only to help Amy. Lois acquiesced, thanked her for bringing lunch, asked her whether Leopard Tank was spelled as the spotted cat or as the rotting person, and went back to her work. Chloe, shaking her head, left her searching for more nicotine gum, and went to the bathroom to apply make-up. Back down on the first floor she grabbed a handful of memory sticks and her phone, checked whether she had really put her press card into her bag and left for her conference.

The conference theme was Pollution Pollutes: the dangers of our health policies, and boasted the presence of two Professors specialized in Hazard Policies and Health. One of the professors was from Sweden, the other from France. Chloe was already looking forward to deciphering their accents.

As she stepped into her car (the auditorium/conference hall was on the other side of Metropolis and after one failed experience with the metro Chloe Sullivan chose to cough up the outrageous parking fee) she recalled another conference about one and a half year ago, one that could still make her smile on the oddest moments. Its subject had been Corporation Law, and it had been even more boring than it sounded, but it had ended in the rather memorable Spaghetti Incident…

Like this one would, that conference had started at two, just after lunch, and she remembered she had sat for two hours of lecture and a too short break in the booth reserved for the press dozing off on the drone of some authority on corporate law, doodling on a piece of paper, when, in quick succession, first the light, then the microphone, and then the air conditioning stuttered, blinked and went off. Ghostly emergency lights flickered on, making everybody look sick, dying, or dead.

The speaker, an elderly Russian man with proud moustaches, called Rosselskin, oblivious, continued for another three sentences before he noticed that a. he could no longer read his notes, b. the dull silence of his bored audience had turned into a questioning murmur, and c. the young man who'd been standing at the entrance to welcome the listeners and participants was now situated in front of his stool and was calling for attention.

"Ladies and gentlemen! Please, ladies and gentlemen! Can I have your attention, please?" Hands forming a megaphone around his mouth, the young man hollered to be heard over the increasingly panicked crowd. Finally, he screamed, "OI! CAN I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? THANK YOU! NOW, AS YOU'VE PROBABLY NOTICED, WE'VE JUST LOST ALL POWER. APPARENTLY, SOMEONE HAS BLOWN UP THE POWERHOUSE OF THIS BLOCK." Finding that the talking had died down, he continued at a lower volume, "Of course, the MetCon has its own generator. It will take some time until we've restored the light, and I'm afraid that the airco might malfunction, but we'll do our very best to keep the inconvenience to a minimum. For now, I'd like to invite you to the grand hall for some refreshments. I am afraid though," he added with a smile that indicated that he was going for a funny note, "that the coffee machines and the soda machines won't be accessible."

The audience uttered the softest of chuckles. Chloe was not amused. Already the air was becoming oppressively stuffy with so many people in a closed-off room and the air conditioning on the blink. If coffee was forfeit, how was she going to stay awake through the rest of this dreadfully boring event? By the time she had finally made it into the grand hall, lit by candles and the small orange lights at waist height, Chloe had the feeling she'd spent ten hours in the middle of a protest march in Nairobi: she was hot, squashed, her feet hurt, and her tongue stuck to her palate. After the horrors of the subway (who could have known that one thirty meant rush hour in the subway?), she was thoroughly sick of masses, and the only thing she wanted was to have a glass of wine and sit quietly in a corner to write her report on the lectures she'd already heard.

A waitress with curly blonde hair in a high pony tail was just offering drinks to a group of people close to her, and Chloe made her way over to them. The moment she'd arrived, the waitress had just moved on to another group. Chloe followed. When she'd reached that other group, she was just in time to see the tray bobbing off and then vanish behind one of the huge pillars that stood in random places and, according to the architect, lent the grand hall its Romanesque appeal.

"Romanesque my ass," Chloe grumbled. She went in pursuit. The curly blonde pony tail bounced back into view once she'd walked around the pillar, unfortunately separated from Chloe by three ladies in smart business suits who were earnestly discussing Dr. Rosselskin's theories.

The waitress went left. Chloe ducked after her and found in her path the bulk of an important-looking gentleman. She smiled politely, cursing inwardly as the tantalizing glasses veered into another direction and momentarily disappeared behind yet another cluster of people. Mumbling a couple of polite-sounding vowels, she left the gentleman behind and stalked after the waitress. She had vanished. Chloe got her bearings behind a pillar and scanned the crowd. There! How she'd done it, Chloe would never know but the waitress and her drinks were now on the far right side of the hall. Chloe set off again. The waitress lifted her tray and slowly began to move along the wall.

"Oh no you won't!"

The emergency lights cast a warm glow over the throng, almost making Chloe feel as if she were in Viet Nam, hunting Charlie. Her heels clicked determinedly on the tiles. But the waitress, elusive as a butterfly, had by now made her way to the middle of the room, and Chloe's way was blocked by the information stand. Wine, juice and water exited stage right, and Chloe had no other option than to go around left, either detouring immensely if she went around both stand and pillar, or taking a shortcut _between_ the stand and the pillar, and try to meet up in the center. She growled.

Still, she was thirsty and frustrated and she wanted wine, damn it! to drown this horrible conference, so she ducked into the narrow passage—and almost bumped into Lex, who was leaning with his back against the stand and was drumming his fingers on the top of the counter. He hadn't seen her yet, was staring into the distance, but he did have a glass of red wine in the hand that wasn't drumming, and occasionally sipped from it.

Now what was he doing here? She hadn't seen him on the guest list, she was sure of it. Of course, business and management proposals, it would apply to LuthorCorp as much as to any other corporation, but still, it was a surprise to see him here.

His fingers kept moving, hidden for everybody but those wedged between the stand and the central pillar, like Chloe Sullivan. He wasn't as much drumming, she thought, as tapping out something. Piano. She giggled. He was playing piano. He must be as bored as she was, then. She edged a little closer and whispered, "What are you playing, mister Luthor? Beethoven?"

The man had nerves of steel; he didn't even start. Instead, he looked around, smiled that little arrogant smile of his, and said, "Chloe. I _thought_ I recognized you on the reporter's bench. What are you doing there? Are you stuck?" He held out his hand to assist her; she took it and let him drag her back into the open. "Louis Armstrong," he added.

"I'm sorry?"

"I was playing Jazz, not Beethoven. I don't play Beethoven anyway. It's far too…severe for my taste. Most certainly for this occasion, which would only merit with the simplest of Straus waltzes…" His fingers drummed a quick rhythm on the counter, and he gave her a mocking smile that told her that he had seen her yawn over Professor Marcowitz's speech and doze off over Rosselskin's. She gave a mental shrug. The man would have made anyone yawn. As a matter of fact, she was thinking about taping one of his lectures and sell it as sleep therapy.

"I didn't see you on the list. If I'd known you'd be here I might not have been so incredibly bored during the first break."

"Charmed, I'm sure," Lex drawled. "I got an invitation but at first it wasn't clear I'd make it—I had another lawsuit to press and launder and then throw out of court." He smiled smugly. The lawsuit, Chloe gathered, was no longer an issue. "But don't you want to drink anything?"

Chloe sighed. "You wouldn't believe it, but I've been trying to tackle that waitress for the past ten minutes, but she keeps avoiding me."

"Ah. So that's why you were taking a short cut." He chuckled, adjusted his pose and looked vaguely into the direction of the waitress. Ten seconds later she was standing next to him, her tray stretched out like an offering. Chloe gaped at him. She hastily snatched a glass of white wine before the waitress decided she'd been tricked and Mister Luthor was not the one who required refreshments. Lex, however, also picked another glass, gulped down the remnants of his first and placed it back on her tray.

"Thank you," he said, scoring a few personal points, and the little blonde thing smiled and blushed prettily, and sailed away with gently swaying hips.

Chloe laughed, be it slightly annoyed. "How did you do that? I have to wage battles to get a drink, and you just…move…and they appear next to you like a genie."

"Practice," Lex said. "Being famous, or infamous, whatever you like, and leaving large tips also helps. Pretending to be impressed with someone's figure is also bound to get you into their good graces." He flashed her an uncommonly broad grin. "In short, manipulation is what you're looking for. Do you want me to teach you?"

He was, Chloe decided, in a very strange mood. Perhaps he was more relieved about winning his case than he pretended to be. Or maybe… "Lex, are you drunk?"

"I don't _get_ drunk," Lex said with a little shrug. He made a sound of appreciation as the hall lights blinked on. "Ah. Looks like they've got their electricity back online. Great. I wouldn't want to miss Professor Dackerey's lecture on Economic values."

Again that weird, broad grin instead of the slight mocking smile she was used to.

"Somehow," Chloe said, "I get the impression that you are less than entirely sincere about your desire to hear Professor Dackerey's. Is he a terrible bore?"

Lex's eyes widened. "Oh no, on the contrary, his views are quite interesting. No, it's…" he was interrupted by the same young man from before, who now invited the participants back into the room. Lex leaned a little closer to Chloe, walking up with her as she drifted back to the door, and said softly, "Dackerey's opinions are insightful and sharp. The man, himself, however, is old and dull. However, he might prove amusing despite himself. He lost most of his hair over the years, you see, couldn't live with the fact that even his bridging days were over, and obtained a toupee."

Almost automatically Chloe's eyes went to Lex's gleaming pale skull. He smiled benevolently.

"As you might have noticed, I don't believe in hair pieces," he said dryly. His mouth twitched again. They were almost at the point where they had to split up: he back to his VIP box, Chloe back to her bench. "He does. But he doesn't know how to wear them. Pay attention to that, when he comes up. See you around, miss Sullivan." His hand brushed her shoulder in farewell, then Chloe was pushed to the left, and Lex went on to his seat closer to the speaking chair.

True to the usher's word, the Air conditioning did no longer work, and within half an hour into Rosselskin's recommenced monologue Chloe's concentration began to wane. The room was hot and stifling. The Russian accent grated on her nerves, and she thought his arguments were nonsensical. Law wasn't her kind of subject, and she was already wondering whom to give her recorder to, because she sure as hell wouldn't be able to make a good story out of this.

She woke from her stupor when Rosselskin ended with, "And now, my esteemed colleague, Professor Dackerey." And clapped his hands. A tall, stiff, gaunt man stepped up to the stool, a rolled-up bunch of paper clutched in his hand. Chloe glanced down to the VIP box, where Lex's bald head reflected the light like a white porcelain cup, and saw that he was looking up at her. He was too far away to see his expression, but she was sure he was smirking. She focused on Dackerey on stage.

He had a good head of hair—at first sight. She was momentarily distracted when he began to speak; was there really not a single professor of law who didn't have a horrible, nasal rasp of a voice? What he said made sense, but, Chloe thought as she squinted to see him better, Lex had been right, there was something odd about his hair. He kept pushing it back from his face, and it was just wrong. Something about the shape of it…

Below, in the VIP box, Lex's shoulders were shaking. And suddenly it struck her, and then she had to push her fist hard into her mouth to keep from guffawing laughter. Dackerey had his toupee on backwards. The bangs that kept falling into his eyes should be in his neck, and those weird bits behind his ears should have been his sideburns. Chloe began to giggle.

Ignorant of how ludicrous he looked, the professor continued his admittedly very interesting lecture. He compared a company's obedience to the law with pasta: if it is hard and stiff, unboiled, it might work but people did not like it. If the law was not applied rigidly enough, it was like overboiled pasta, and no one liked limp, soggy pasta. If the pasta were al dente, so to speak, it was perfect. Leniency would be appreciated, but the law had to be followed, and only then a company could thrive.

Or something like that.

Chloe had lost him after the limp, soggy pasta. She sat red-faced, biting her lips, trying very hard not to howl with laughter and dared not even look at the man for fear of losing it completely.

Lex's shoulders were still shaking. She didn't know whether to love him or hate him for pointing out Dackerey's hair to her. All the people around her were looking at her. But…god. Those sideburns! And that luxurious fringe! Choking, she crammed her pen into her mouth. If this went on, she couldn't even give this recording to anyone else; all they'd hear was her, laughing. That would be disastrous. Perry would never let her do conferences again, and that meant another year writing obituaries. That would be sad. That would make her very sad. That would…

Dackerey flipped his bangs away from his forehead, and almost dislodged the entire toupee. Chloe bit down hard on her pen and squeaked when she got a mouthful of ink and plastic splinters. Lex, in the VIP box, excused himself and disappeared through a side door. After a few minutes, Chloe, still blue-mouthed, excused herself as well and exited the room through the main doors.

The moment she was outside she fell against the wall and laughed so hard her sides began to hurt. Lex was hanging limply against the abandoned information stand, still hiccupping with mirth. When he noticed her ink-stained lips, he began to snicker again.

"I hate you!" Chloe hissed. She rubbed blue fingers over blue lips but gave up as another spasm pulled the corners of her mouth towards her ears. "Why did you tell me, you bastard! Why didn't anyone else notice? He looked like a complete moron!"

"I told you he might prove amusing," Lex chuckled. He wiped his eyes. "Aaahhh, I haven't laughed like that for waaaay too long. Soggy pasta! Ha! And the way he tried to wind his sideburn around his finger…" He began to laugh again. Helplessly, Chloe joined in. She hadn't ever seen Lex laugh like this, and for a moment, despite his tailor-made suit and his tie, he actually looked like a normal twenty-something guy with a struck-and-resonating funny bone. He looked like someone that could be a lot of fun to be around.

_Had Helen seen Lex like this, and fallen in love with him?_ Chloe wondered. Up to now she had hardly considered Luthor Junior as human, let alone someone she could like as a person. Well, no, that wasn't true. She had liked Lex, on occasion, because he was basically a good guy, and he HAD saved her and her dad's life when Lionel (or was it Morgan Edge?) had rigged the safehouse. But the fact that he'd protected her, that he'd sometimes done her and her friends a favor, that he played the piano like a pro and that he collected comic books had never served to render him 'well-I'll-be-damned-he's-just-as-much-of-a-geek-as-me' human as much as this outburst of rather childish hilarity.

Applause could be heard through the door. Dackerey had finished his speech. Now there would be half an hour of audience participation, questions, and some panel discussing any leftover questions. Chloe realized she had left her recorder on her seat.

"You…ah…" Lex tapped his lower lip. "You have something blue on your m-mouth." He tried to keep his face in check, but his own mouth kept twitching, even when he pressed his lips tightly together.

"I know." Again, she rubbed at the stain, knowing she wouldn't get it off unless she used alcohol or nail polish remover. "It's all your fault! I bit my pen, and…Would you stop it, damn it!?"

Lex went down for the count again. Winning that lawsuit really must have made him giddy with relief. Or he was high; it wasn't THAT funny. She dug into her purse, found a tiny mirror in her lipstick holder, and burst out laughing herself. Yes, it WAS that funny. Compared to her, Dackerey and his bangs looked as distinguished as the queen of England. She, however, looked like a deranged version of August the Clown.

"Oh god," she muttered, torn between amusement and horror, "It really does look…I can't go back like this."

"No," wheezed Lex, "I don't think you can. Maybe you can…clean up, or something…in the bathroom…"

"It's…it WAS… a permanent marker."

"Ah. How…unfortunate." Tears dripped down Lex's nose. She might have to slap him to pull him out of this state. If he kept giggling like this, no one would find her guilty of assault. Violence wasn't punishable if one was provoked, right? Then she realized something else.

"I'm by subway."

"Oh." Lex made a manly attempt at seriousness…and failed. "No," he said, "you're not. The power is off for this entire block; I doubt any metros are running. And even if they were, you can't go by subway looking like this!"

"I know!" She was no longer smiling. If she didn't write a good summary of this event, the chance for another shot at a desk above floors was extremely slim. No matter how funny this all was to Lex, to Chloe it was a question of career and failure. The thought was very sobering. Desperately, she scrubbed at her blue mouth.

"Don't," Lex said. He handed her a tissue. "You'll only make it worse and hurt yourself."

"I have to go and get my recorder back. And I have to know what they're discussing inside, or it's basement duty for me for the rest of my life!"

Lex checked his watch. "How much time have you got left on your recorder?"

"Time? Um…let's see…" She'd put in a new stick after Rosselskin stepped down. "About another hour. Why?"

"Did you leave it on your table or on the chair?"

"On the chair."

"Ok." He plucked his mobile phone from his pocket, turned it on and selected a number. "Jonah Eckheart? It's Lex Luthor. Yes. I'm calling about a recording device. Now, a press recording device. It belongs to Ms. Sullivan. She was called away for an emergency but she's forgotten her recorder. I'm sorry?" He turned to Chloe. "What was your seat number?"

She checked her ticket. "M-34. On the left."

Lex repeated her information to the one he was calling, and nodded. "Yes. No, just leave it there until everybody's left. You can just send it to the Daily Planet on the name of Sullivan. That'd be great. Right. Thank you." He flipped his phone closed and dropped it back into his pocket. "There you go, problem solved. You'll get it back by tomorrow; I know Jonah, he's a very thorough man. I think he appreciated his LuthorCorp Christmas bonus last year."

Chloe's knees were weak with relief. "He's going to send it to the Daily Planet?"

"That's right," Lex said pleasantly, then grinned again as he looked at her mouth. "Now, what do you say I take you home in my car with tainted windows. You can't go back into the room like this, and I don't want to go back either. One more reference to corporate law and I'll become a ruthless criminal."

He put his hands in his pockets, thumbs sticking out. The way he held himself: shoulders back, hips canted, legs spread slightly and feet planted firmly on the ground told Chloe that whatever she decided, he'd be fine with it. His overconfidence was irritating. But his offer had been made out of kindness, not to coerce her, and it was very tempting to accept it.

"Chloe?"

"Ok," she said. "I'm yours."

"That's what I like to hear," Lex said with a satisfied smirk. "Did you have a coat with you?"

TBC


	9. Chapter 9

Ok, this chapter did not go according to plan. Must be all the hardcore Chlexers infecting me. I was just going for this nice little erotic licking scene but then things kind of got out of hand…I'll leave an end-note 

I'm afraid I'm too focused on cooking. As a bonus, there's a vegetarian pasta sauce recipe in this chapter (/sarcasm). Anyway, mild smut ahead. R, or something. Dutch tv is all about tits and ass, so I never know what to dub porn. It might happen again, but it won't be the focus—that's still exploring and disintegrating LowlyHuman!Lex.

Anyway, enough rambling. Enjoy. Or hate. I hope the first.

**Nine: In which the Spaghetti Mystery is revealed**

Lex was a very good driver. He was also the fastest, most suicidal driver Chloe'd ever shared a car with.

She didn't exactly drive like an old lady herself, but Lex, she decided, clenching her hands to blue-stained whiteness around some lever next to her seat, should have become a Formula 1 racer. He was utterly relaxed, face peaceful, fingers tapping along on the gear handle with some pop song on the radio…while he accelerated to 80 miles per hour on the Metropolis peripheral road. No automatic clutch for Lex Luthor. He shifted from three to four to five, and the Jaguar purred like its namesake while they swerved around other cars at a break-neck speed.

Clark had once told her that Lex drove like a maniac. She'd always thought he had been exaggerating. Well, he hadn't been. She tried to close her eyes but couldn't as Lex pressed down the pedal to just make it through an orange light.

"Christ, Lex, how much do you spend on speeding tickets a month?"

"Less than you might think," Lex replied easily, keeping his eyes on the road. "Why, am I going too fast for you?" He patted the stick and eased it back to third gear, the curve of his mouth curling upward. Chloe managed not to exhale with relief, and frowned instead.

"No, you're not. But I'd like to survive this little trip, if it's all the same to you."

"I've never…well, ok, I crashed once. Twice, if you count that little accident last winter. And that wasn't my fault; the roads were slippery. I assure you you're quite safe."

"You're richer than god," Chloe grumbled. "Why don't you take a chauffeur?" She was mesmerized by the dance of that gear stick. It was a bit like a Cha-cha-cha, with all the traffic lights that made him slow down, speed up, break and shift gear. Lex's white shirt sleeves—long sleeves, despite the warm weather—were very bright in the afternoon sunlight, even though the color was dulled by the tinted windows. There was a tiny spot at the height of his inner elbow that kept appearing and disappearing while he pushed the stick around.

"What, and miss out on all the fun? What's the use of buying cars if you can't drive them?" He took a right-turn that squashed Chloe against the door. "I think," he continued while she unstuck her face from the window, "I only had a driver once, for two weeks, when I'd broken my arm that final year at Excelsior. It was horrible. The man wouldn't drive faster than 60. Took no risks at all…"

"LEX! PEDESTRIAN!"

Lex flicked the wheel around, swerving neatly around the unsuspecting mother with child. "…always insisted on putting on his seatbelt before putting his key in the ignition—I saw her, Chloe—and used the cruise control whenever he had the chance. If you drive like that, you might as well buy a Saab. Or a Peugeot. Oh damn." A long and winding row of cars loomed ominously in the distance. "Let's see if we can take a detour."

He turned left so suddenly Chloe was flung against his shoulder despite her seatbelt. Her desperately flailing hands scrabbled for something to hold onto, but the next turn pushed her upright again and she wrapped all ten fingers around the handle on the car ceiling. Lex, she noticed when she dared to look at him, was grinning broadly. She was not going to ask him to drop her off here. She simply wouldn't. Even if he tried to play chicken with a _building_, he wasn't going to scare her out of his car. Even though, she admitted to herself, she was getting rather scared, especially since she now realized what that little spot on his sleeve was.

"Are you on something?" she asked sharply. "There's blood on your shirt."

"Is there?" he cast a casual glance at his arm. "Must be from the needle."

"_Needle_?" Ok, maybe it was better to be a coward and live to see another day.

He laughed. "The nurses these days are so careless."

Nurses. Oh. Hospital. Wait a minute…

"You were at the hospital? Whatever for?" Automatically, she checked him for injuries, but he seemed perfectly fine. "Did you get hurt? Are you sick?"

"Just dialysis," Lex said, zooming into another lane. "Blood transplant," he clarified when Chloe raised a puzzled eyebrow at him. "I can really recommend it, it's such a rush."

For one moment Chloe thought that he'd found yet another outrageous way to get high, but then she belatedly registered the sarcasm behind his cheerful tone, and realized that a blood transplant could hardly be fun.

"A blood transplant?" Why on earth would he need a blood transplant? When did people need blood transplants? Horrible diseases like AIDS and Hepatitis C and Leukemia sprung up in her head. _Lex Luthor Dying of Leukemia: Read This Tragic Story On Page 2. _She felt vaguely nauseous. "Are you…"

"I'm fine." He did seem fine, relaxed and pink, although his brow furrowed when another traffic jam came into view. "It's just some…toxins, you might say. Lingering toxins." Satisfaction still radiated off of him. She still didn't get it.

"Toxins?"

"Toxins. Are you going to repeat everything I say? Nice. Coal slaw."

"Don't be an ass."

Lex smirked. The car crept to a halt. There was no way to avert the five-thirty Metropolis traffic jam, not even for a Jaguar with tinted windows. They rode at a walking pace for a few minutes, in silence but for the radio and the soft sound of Lex handling his car. Chloe's curiosity overcame her resolve not to speak to him anymore. "What kind of toxins?"

"The toxic kind," Lex teased.

Chloe pouted. "You're so mean! I was only, you know, showing concern and interest."

"No, you weren't. You were dreaming of headlines and columns." His smile turned somewhat sardonic, even though his expression was still friendly and his eyes sparked with humor when they rested on her mouth. "And while I have no problem at all taking you home, I don't play twenty questions with journalists."

"I wasn't…" She broke off, looked at him. He gazed back, an encouraging, almost eager expression on his face. _He __**wants**__ to tell me_, she thought. _He does, but he doesn't want to read it back in the paper. As if I'd write such an article!_ "I would _never_," she said with emphasis, "publish an article about anyone I knew concerning something so private and so…so serious. Not without asking their permission first. I'm not that cheap."

"I never implied you were cheap. On the contrary, I think you are a very reputable and conscientious reporter. Still…"

"I won't write about it, Lex. It's ok if you don't want to talk about it. I really was just being polite." She wasn't just being polite. She was so curious her hands were still clenched fast around the hold, although they were barely crawling along. And Lex knew it, damn him, and he was milking the moment by the bucket for all it was worth.

When he spoke again his voice had that drawling, drawn out quality that she'd always associated with boredom—but although his eyes were half-lidded, there was still a fierce triumph in that lazy smile, and his words were far from bored.

"Do you remember November last year, when your testimony got my father locked up in jail?"

She hadn't expected him to refer to that particular moment, but nodded. Hell yeah, she remembered. How could she ever have forgotten? Lionel put away, Chloe and father pronounced dead and living in hiding…it hadn't been a great part of her life.

"The evening he was sentenced, he had me poisoned. Dad has a thing for poison, you know, he's a bit like a medieval witch."

"_What_?"

"I don't have many vices," sarcasm made his voice heavier, "but alcohol is one of them. He had me poisoned by brandy. It was a very nasty poison. I had it traced and identified—we've developed it ourselves, LuthorCorp that is. Assassins still use it to make sure their victims don't survive, even if the bullet misses their hearts. I had that section closed down and all scientists working on that project arrested…But anyway, Daddy-dearest poisoned his traitorous son, and I should have died that day." He bared his teeth in an almost feral grin before settling back in smug contentment. "I didn't. I need to have my blood cleaned once in a while, but I survived. And that, Chloe, always makes my day. Can you understand that?"

"Yes," she said, but she didn't understand at all. Lionel had tried to kill Lex? Ok, she knew they didn't see eye to eye and they'd done some pretty horrible things to each other, but to _kill his own son_? She couldn't believe Lionel capable of that. And why was Lex so happy, exactly? Because he'd survived or because by doing so he had foiled his father's plans yet again? His own father's plans to _murder_ him? "I…I didn't know."

Lex shifted lanes. The sound of his traffic indicator was so soft she could hardly hear it.

"Of course you didn't. I didn't exactly shout it off the rooftops." She felt his glance from the corner of his eye, and he smiled again, a little bitterly this time. "You don't believe me, do you?"

"Why would you be lying?"

The smile dwindled, leaving him looking strangely forlorn, and not at all exultant.

"Why would I indeed," he said tonelessly. Then an extremely stubborn look crossed his features before he conjured the self-satisfied mask back, and he said, cheerful as if the bitterness had never been there, "So, tonight I'm celebrating another day of my life. If I ever get out of this bloody traffic jam, that is."

Chloe was silent. She tried, very hard, to understand how his brain worked, but was unable to put herself in his place. He had actually scared her a little with both the story and his reaction to it, which seemed more alien than farm boys shooting fire with their eyes. 'Why are you in such a good mood, Lex?' 'Oh, my dad didn't manage to kill me so I'm feeling festive.' It was crazy! All she'd be able to feel was horror, resentment and fear, and he was _happy_ about it!

"Penny for your thoughts," Lex interrupted her musings.

Chloe's stomach gave an enormous growl. "I'm hungry," she said, grateful to find something else to talk about, even if the sound made her blush with embarrassment.

He chuckled. "Me too. Boring people always make me ravenous. Even if they wear their toupee backwards. If we ever leave this line, I could take you out to dinner. Or you could come and eat at my place. I was planning on making pasta."

"Soggy pasta?" asked Chloe, giggling.

"My pasta is never soggy."

"I didn't know you could cook."

Lex sighed. "Why is it that people always come to the conclusion that because I'm rich, I don't know how to feed myself? I spent three months on an uninhabited island, you know, and uninhabited stands for _sans chef de cuisine_. My maggot squash was doubtlessly the best on the entire island, and if I hadn't been rescued I'd probably have perfected my toasted banana & pineapple recipe."

He was still smiling. Chloe wondered whether he was joking or stark raving mad. "Maggot…squash?" she said weakly.

Lex nodded. "A very good way to both get the little buggers to stop squirming and to get rid of any lingering frustration," he said pleasantly. "Just dig them up, put them on a flat rock and keep pounding until they're paste. Lovely with live fish and roasted grubs. Yum."

A tremor started in his lower lip, traveled down his body.

For a moment, Chloe, greatly alarmed, thought he was going to have another breakdown, but then the corners of his mouth quirked upward instead of down, and it occurred to her that he was laughing. He was _making fun of _ her. "You…bastard!" she cried out, second time that evening, and punched his shoulder, and he started to laugh in earnest. She really didn't know whether to beat him or laugh along with him. In the end she did both, thumping her fist on his arm while she laughed. "You…you lying…!"

"Ow! Ow, stop hitting me," Lex cried, holding up his arm to defend himself, "you'll make me miss my turn!"

"Serves you right for spinning such outrageous yarn," she shot back, but she stopped pummeling him and sat back in her seat. "So, Lex…what DID you live on when you were stranded on that island? I never dared ask when we were still living in Smallville, but since you're so very forthcoming with information today…Do enlighten me."

"It sure as hell wasn't pasta," Lex said evasively.

"Don't want to talk about it?"

The look he shot her was both humorous and haunted, she didn't know how he managed, but he did. "I just did."

"Maggot squash?"

"They tasted better alive."

Chloe suppressed a shiver. "I'm sure you much prefer pasta, then. What were you planning? Macaroni? Lasagna? Spaghetti?"

"Spaghetti," said Lex. He steered into another street, and the traffic jam was thinning. "With Champagne. After all, I've lived to drink another day." He fell silent for a while, then looked her in the eye and said, "My offer still stands. I can take you home right now, if you want, but you're welcome to come over and help me finish my bottle."

Chloe made a great pretense of considering, although her stomach had already accepted the moment he said Spaghetti and she wouldn't dream of turning down Lex Luthor for dinner. "Spaghetti, huh? With Champagne?"

"Bolinger."

"Is that the name of the Champagne?"

"Yes."

"Do I sound like a complete Hick for not knowing that name?"

Lex grinned. "Yes."

"I guess I really should taste it, then, right? If only to make sure I won't forget it again."

"Absolutely," said Lex. "And you can cut the onions too, if you're any good with a knife."

Chloe snorted. "I didn't know you put onions in your Champagne. Or did you mean the pasta sauce? I really hope so, because I'm quite sure that putting onions in Champagne is a criminal offence punishable by flogging."

Lex gave her a look that was so blatantly sexually challenging that the blood rushed to her cheeks, but he didn't say anything like 'Wouldn't you like to flog me' or 'I'd love to put you over my knee'. He just smirked.

At that point, Chloe should have told Lex to drop her off at her little apartment with her dying plants (as of yet unsaved by her neighbor). Instead, she said, striving to keep her tone cool, poised and professional, "Sure, I'll come. But you can do your onion-cutting yourself," and thus started the Spaghetti Incident.

Chloe had never been inside Lex's penthouse before, and she was amazed at the size of the thing. It had six rooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen suitable for the Ritz, and carpet that was so rich it almost swallowed her up to the knees.

"Welcome," said Lex as he tossed his car keys on a solid mahogany table, "to my humble abode."

"If this is humble," Chloe muttered, gazing at a skyline that brought tears to her eyes, "Mephisto will come and drag you off to hell for superciliousness one of these days."

"You're right," said Lex. "It isn't all that humble. In fact, it's far too big—but I love the view." He joined her at the huge windows that spanned most of the west wall of his living room, and gazed outside, pressing one hand against the glass.

"I can imagine," Chloe said. "It's beautiful." She wondered how many women he'd done against this very window while he commented on the view. _Now why do I think of that at this moment_? Ducking her head, she hid her blush and rubbed her mouth. "Um, Lex, do you have any nail polish remover? For my mouth?"

"Of course," Lex said blandly. "Which bachelor living single and alone DOESN'T have nail polish remover?"

Immediately, Chloe's overwrought imagination produced a picture of Lex in a Gothic outfit—leather, he'd wear lots of black leather, and one of those ultra-wrong net-shirts—with black-lacquered nails. "Sorry."

"I have gin," he suggested. "Almost everything comes off with gin. I should know, I…" He stopped, tapped the tip of his tongue against the scar on his upper lip and turned away, smiling.

"What?" asked Chloe. "What did you do?"

"Nothing." He rummaged around in a cupboard and came out with a bottle of Bols, which was probably some freakishly expensive beverage, entirely unsuitable to be used for the removal of ink stains. "Here, use this. I don't have any wipes or cotton—wait a moment, I do." He dove into another cupboard, retrieved an emergency kit and presented her with a fistful of cotton wads and a small tube of Vaseline.

"God, Lex, you're so forward!" Chloe exclaimed.

"For your lips," Lex said patiently. "They'll probably be chapped to pieces."

"Is this another story you're not telling me?"

"If you think I used to wear lipstick and used gin to wipe it off…" he drawled, gently pushing her into the hall, "you're sadly mistaken. Now, just to make sure you don't get lost: that door over there is a bathroom. Don't use that one, I keep my beheaded women in there." He turned her 45 degrees to the right. "That is a bedroom. Nothing there. That door next to it is another bedroom. And that door is also a bathroom. It has a very nice bubble bath but also a mirror-wall, which, while it should be quite handy while you take off your blue make-up, is rather embarrassing when you try to have a bath." He turned her another 45 degrees. "That, as you can see, is the kitchen. When you're done scrubbing your face, come and meet me there. I'd love to sit and play host for a while but I'm really starving, so I'm going to start cooking. Next to the kitchen is my study, where I never study. My bedroom is right beside it. And then we come round to the sitting room."

"Wow," Chloe said sarcastically. "That was the quickest, dullest tour of a gorgeous house I've ever had."

"I'm sorry," Lex said, drawing out his words as if he really was from the south, "I'd love to give you a proper tour, but I'm afraid I won't be able to keep a straight face. Your mouth is kind of distracting. In a not very sexy way, if you take my meaning."

"And there went gallantry down the drain," Chloe muttered, quasi-insulted.

Lex grinned. He very briefly touched her lower lip with his thumb. "I could offer to clean it for you, but I'm afraid you'd misinterpret my intentions."

Thud-thud-thud went Chloe's heartbeat suddenly, and for one moment she wondered what he would do if she said that she really, absolutely wouldn't mind if he absolved her of her embarrassing ink stain. What she said, was "I probably would, yes. I won't be long." And then she fled into the bathroom with the bubble bath and the mirror wall, clutching the bottle of gin to her chest. The light went on the moment she closed the door behind her; she didn't even have to search for a light switch.

What the hell was that? Was he just hitting on me? 

Oh yes, he was. Chloe Sullivan may not be the local hussy, but she knew when a man was hitting on her, and if she'd been a nail she'd been struck all the way to the head into Lex's carpet, so hard he'd been hitting on her.

"Huh!" she exhaled, ridiculously pleased with herself, and turned towards the gleam to her right. Her face fell. Maybe he wasn't hitting on her after all. No sane man would, the way she looked now. She had a picture of herself as a three-year-old, picking and eating berries, her entire face stained with juice. She'd always thought that picture was adorable—aww, look at the cute little blond girl with her mouth all blue! There was nothing cute about the picture now. She looked preposterous. Even her teeth were bluish. Unless Lex had a secret fetish for clowns, he couldn't possibly have felt any attraction towards her.

_That'll teach you to use Bic pens instead of fine liners._

She unscrewed the cap of the gin—Dutch gin, 'Fijne Jonge Bols'—soaked a few cotton balls by pressing them against the opening and shaking the bottle, and set to cleaning.

In the end, she was very grateful for the Vaseline. As usual (and that was a very annoying habit of his) Lex 'd been right when he'd predicted her lips would be raw after being scrubbed with alcohol. The ink was gone, more or less. Nothing but praise for the Jonge Bols as a make-up remover. She couldn't get it out of the tiny clefts in her lower lip, though, and now her mouth was very red, shiny and puffy. She looked, she thought, like someone who'd been thoroughly taken against the window of a gorgeous penthouse apartment.

Her stomach rumbled. She patted it soothingly. _Hush. You'll be fed soon. Spaghetti. And what was it? Bolinger? It sounds like a hat, not like a type of Champagne._

She carried the bottle with her to the kitchen, where Lex, to her immense disappointment, was not wearing an apron. When he saw her he smirked again, then pulled a huge green bottle out of an even larger cooler, and poured two glasses. He handed her one.

"That looks much better. I hope it doesn't hurt…?"

"I'm fine, thanks." She gestured at the bottle. "It may be my supreme hick-ness, but isn't that bottle a little on the big side?"

"It's a magnum. They're bigger. Family-size Champagne, you might say. Cheers!" He raised his glass, and she echoed the movement, then took a small sip. The bubbles tickled her nose, but the taste was quite good. A bit sour, but still lovely. "To life," Lex murmured, then smiled and said, "No, to hair pieces and pens." He took another sip and closed his eyes in bliss.

"To obedient waitresses and thankful employees," Chloe toasted in return. She took another mouthful. Yes, it was nice, but she guessed it was somewhat of an acquired taste. She didn't dare say so, but actually she thought she preferred beer. Maybe she just had to get used to the taste. Lex certainly seemed to like it.

Lex. Who'd been poisoned by his own father. Chloe placed her glass on the glossy black kitchen table. "Sooo," she said slowly, "In the car you said that you have to have your blood cleaned a few times a year."

Lex nodded. He put his glass on the working top and began fishing pans, cutlery and ingredients out of cupboards, fridges and drawers. Fridges. He had two, as far as Chloe could see. "Less often than I used to, though. Ah, the miracles of extraterrestrial blood-based serums…Now where did I put the olive oil?"

Chloe blinked at the extraterrestrial blood-based serum, then decided she hadn't heard him right. Potent stuff, Champagne. She cleared her throat. "So…If you weren't in time for your dialysis session…If you…What would happen?"

"I'd die," Lex said calmly. He poured olive oil into a pan and placed it on the induction cooking top, filled another with water and put it on as well. "First my kidneys'd go, and then the rest would fall out pretty soon after. The kidney failure is a good indicator, though. The moment I start pissing blood I know it's time to make an appointment." He cut a tomato into four pieces. Feeling her gaze upon him, he looked up from his vegetable slaughter. "Sorry?"

"Are you even serious?" Chloe asked. She needed something in her hands to twiddle with, and reached out for her Champagne. "I mean, is this for real? Did he, did your…Lionel really poison you?"

Lex cut another tomato into pieces. "Yes, he did. Would you feel better if I was less sardonic about it? Or if I hadn't told you? If so, I'm sorry. I…"

"No! No, that isn't what I mean." Flustering, she downed the rest of her Champagne and shivered at the flood of bubbles and tart alcohol. "It's just…Heh…You're very tranquil about it."

"Tranquility is obligatory when facing death on a 48-hour basis," Lex said matter-of-factly. Five chopped-up tomatoes sailed into the hot olive oil, and he now began dicing mushrooms. "Are you sure about those onions? I really hate slicing onions."

_Subject covered, dealt with and closed_. Resigned, Chloe stuck out her hand. "Give me a knife, then."

He did, looked at her empty glass and lifted his bottle. "More Champagne? Or would you rather have something else?"

The man must be psychic. What an unnerving thought. "What've you got?"

Too late, she saw the grin, and by then he'd begun: "Oh, all sorts of things. I have white wine, red wine, brandy, absinth, whiskey—single malt and blended—martini, vodka, vodka-lime, gin, that disgusting green banana stuff, sherry, apfelcorn, cherry brandy, apricot brandy…"

"Cherry brandy sounds nice," Chloe interjected, more to stop him than because she had any true desire to drink cherry brandy. "Is there any kind of booze you _don't_ have?" She peeled an onion and began to cut it into tiny pieces, throwing them in with the simmering tomato.

"I hope not," Lex said, and disappeared briefly into a small room that was attached to the kitchen. "Although there is some kind of alcoholic beverage the Indians made by chewing and then spitting out fruit and mixing it with water and grain to ferment." He returned with a bottle holding a bright red liquid. "I don't think they bottled it. I don't think I want to try it out, either. Ice?"

"Uh…Do you usually drink it on the rocks?"

Lex shrugged. "Some people do, some don't. I don't. But," he grinned, "you won't look like a hick if you do."

"No ice," Chloe decided. He handed her the glass and she took a small sip. After the Champagne, it tasted like candy. She took a bigger swallow. "Mmm…Nice!"

"Thought so," said Lex, with satisfaction, and went back to his mushrooms. For some time, they chopped away in silence, occasionally drinking from their respective glasses. Lex refilled his, offered her a raw mushroom. She was surprised to find that it tasted quite good; in the Sullivan home, no mushroom had ever been consumed until after it was baked. The water came to a boil, and Lex put in the spaghetti.

It was quite hot in the kitchen, and after a while Chloe took off her blouse, continuing in her sleeveless top with turtles on it. It was less warm, and even if she spilled tomato juice on this top, no one would notice a spot in between the turtles.

"Nice turtles," Lex commented without looking up from his chopping block. His voice quivered with suppressed laughter. Despite the heat, he looked as cool as a gold fish. "Pepper?"

Chloe accepted a slice of red pepper, munched it slowly. She emptied her glass, and Lex refilled it. He refilled his own as well. "Shouldn't you be wearing an apron?" she asked, sipping. "Like, a frilly pink one, with some corny phrase on it? Like, '_A woman's work is never done'_?"

"Luthors don't wear aprons."

"But what if you spilled something on your shirt? Tomato never comes out in the wash."

"Hmm, I see your point," Lex said pensively. "Well, I guess I could either take it off…or just buy a new shirt. What do you think?"

_I think you'd probably look pretty good half-naked in front of a stove_. "I'd stick with the apron," Chloe said, blushing. Now where had that come from? Her mind was full of surprises this evening. She took up her knife again. "Do you have anything else I can cut?"

"Olives?"

"Eew!" She stuck out her tongue. "No olives in the pasta sauce!"

"R-right, no olives. Courgette?

"What?"

"Zucchini."

"Ok."

"I'd better add some tomato juice as well," Lex mused, "or it'll boil dry." He drained his glass, refilled it, went to the fridge and took out a carton of peeled tomatoes in juice. It was cold, and the sauce stopped bubbling when he'd added it to the mixture. Chloe stood right behind him with a plateful of zucchini in slices, but when she shook the whole mass into the pan a huge gloop of sauce spattered up and hit her full in the face.

"Waaaah!" With one of her eyes covered in tomato-goo and the other squeezed shut in reaction, she did a little panicky dance, not knowing where to put the plate until Lex took it from her and spun her around.

"Chloe! Are you alright? Did you get burned?"

"Nooo!" she wailed. "But I can't see a thing! I…You're laughing at me again, aren't you?"

"No," Lex said, but both his voice and the hands on her shoulders were quivering. "This just isn't your day, is it? No, don't wipe your eyes, you've just been cutting onions—the very reason why I let _you_ do that: I always get it in my eyes. Wait. Hold still. I'll…"

Something touched her eye. It was warm and firm, and it swiped away most of the sauce. Again. She opened her free eye and got a close-up of Lex's pale neck while he ran his tongue over her tomato-soaked eyebrow.

_Guh_….

"Hold still…" Lick, lick, lick he went, cleaning her face with little cat-like swipes of his tongue.

She had the vague notion that she should find this either hilariously funny or embarrassing as hell, but all she could think of was how unbelievably sexy it was to have your face sampled as if it were some sort of pre-course. Lex definitely liked this pre-course. He went on licking quite a bit longer than the amount of sauce on her face warranted, and when he pulled away there was a fine hint of color in his cheeks. Chloe, she was sure, was so red it was as if she'd dipped her entire head into the sauce. She could feel her heartbeat all the way in her fingertips.

"There you go. Couldn't use paper towels or you'd got tomato into your…" He stopped as Chloe dipped all five fingers into the warm sauce and smeared them over his cheek, past his jaw and into his neck. "Chloe?" But there was hardly any wonder in his voice, only anticipation, and for one second she suspected him of staging this entire scene…but no. He couldn't have. Not even Lex.

She gave him a little push, causing him to fall down into a kitchen chair, gave him a big, hopefully not too slutty grin, and proceeded to return the favor. She started with the red drops in his neck, pulling his collar away to get better access. White, soft skin, still no flaring blush, but at one point she had his vein under her tongue and it hammered just as fast as her own.

_I could bite him, _she thought hazily_. Like a vampire. Like…um…maybe I've had a little too much to drink on an empty stomach._

She wouldn't let that deter her, though. The combination of pasta sauce and Luthor was intoxicating as well; he tasted really good. Maybe she could propose to let the spaghetti be and just lap up her share from Lex's face. Or chest. Or…something. She had by now reached his jaw—equally smooth, which felt a little strange because she was used to stubble, but which made it a lot easier to suck off the tomato sauce. She wobbled a little when Lex's hands came to rest on her hips and pulled her closer until she stood between his legs, but immediately readjusted her position and continued up to his cheek and then on to his ear. When she touched the shell of his ear with her tip of her tongue, Lex made a queer little sound and tightened his fingers.

"So, Chloe," Calm, very calm, but so throaty any impression of control was proved a lie. "Did you want to eat…first?"

She pulled back and licked her lips. Lex looked up, slowly, lifting his eyelids at the last moment…and cool, poise and emancipation went right out the window, because damn it to hell if the pure lust in his eyes wasn't the greatest turn-on of the century. Sex object? Yes please. She could think of worse things to be. "If you insist…"

"I don't." He pulled her even closer, simultaneously getting to his feet, and kissed her while he pushed her against the table.

_Yay! Kitchen table sex!_ the Candlelight novel-loving part that was usually deeply buried in Chloe's subconscious cheered. Maybe it was brought out by lack of oxygen; Christ, but the man could kiss! Even if he turned out to be a total disaster in bed, he was nature's gift to women who'd only known sloppy, fumbling puppy-love kisses, kisses full of despair and tears, and kisses that were pure domineering passion and no respect at all. However, if she could believe the gossip magazines, he wasn't all that bad. At all.

She was half-spread over the table, dazed and gasping when Lex said, "No. Not on the table. I have three bedrooms so I'll bloody well make use of one. Come on." He half-carried her out of the kitchen, then put her down with a smirk and simply pulled her along.

Me caveman. You woman. Me want woman! Clobber! 

She giggled, but it did not stop her trailing lustfully after her bald billionaire. How had she failed to see that Lex Luthor was sex on legs? The guy was a goddamn walking phallic symbol, and she'd never noticed! She recalled once studying an elevator security cam recording that showed Lex all over some woman, a woman that had later been killed. It had squicked her out. What a foolish little girl she'd been, she thought. Having your neck nibbled like that wasn't squicky at alllll…

"How attached are you to those tights?" Lex asked conversationally.

"Uh?" They were in a room. He'd had her pressed up against the door with her top hiked up to her shoulders and his own shirt on the floor. Her fingers showed pink and blue on his pale belly, precariously close to the fastening of his pants. She was delighted to see that, although he did not have a six-pack that cast shadows onto itself, he did have those cute muscle lines the Greeks and Romans were so famous for, running from above his hip bones and then down where they blended with his abdominal muscles. His stomach dipped sharply as she traced her fingers along those lines.

"Chloe?"

"I'm sorry, were you saying something?"

"Unless you want to keep your tights I'm going to rip them off."

"Right. Can't have that, can we?"

Lex grinned. "Damn. I've always wanted to do that, but no one ever lets me."

_Yes, that's right, he's done it with lots of women. Dozens._ Chloe supposed she should tell him to stop, and that she didn't want him…but the problem was that she did want him, she didn't want him to stop, and she couldn't care less about any other women.

"Maybe you should invest in some spare pairs," she suggested. "So no one has to leave with bare legs."

Bending down, she unzipped her boots and tossed them into a corner. Her tights went after them, just as her skirt. Lex then removed her top, flicked off her bra with almost blasphemous ease, scooped her up and threw her onto the kingsize bed.

And made her come two times before he even took his own pants off, simply with fingers and tongue. Then he stripped naked, dug up a condom from somewhere, and made her come three times more before shuddering and gasping and rolling off of her.

Chloe was ashamed to say that she didn't have a clue whether he made any sound during sex. Or whether he'd kept his eyes open when he reached orgasm. She'd been too busy floating on clichéd waves and soaring through hackneyed clouds. Even now she was still half comatose with afterglow.

God!

She rubbed her fingers over the sheet and was surprised not to find her outline fucked into the mattress.

_Yay!_ the Candlelight voice squealed, _Lex Luthor just went down on me! Eat your heart out, Miss Super Model in the Glossy! I bet he didn't lick pasta sauce from __**your**__ face!_

Feeling a movement beside her, she opened her eyes and found Lex tying a knot in his condom and pitching it with practiced ease into a dustbin in the corner. For one second she was afraid he'd get up, hand her her clothes, and tell her it was time to go home now, but he didn't. He just stretched, turned to lie on his side, and regarded her with eyes that were twinkling with amusement.

"Ah, you've come to?" And even though she wanted to hit him for both his tone and his words, she thought his complacency was exceptionally cute.

"Yeah…" was all she could say, because like it or not, he was right. She didn't think she'd passed out during sex before. _Well, passed out_…_More like…dozed off a little. Yes, that was it. Dozing._

"Good," he said, and reached out to stroke her hair from her forehead. The gesture was slightly possessive but very tender.

Chloe smiled. "So…" she asked, rolling onto her side as well, "was this brought on by your dialysis as well?"

"No. _This_ was brought on by your sexy little blue tongue."

"Blue…?"

"It's incredibly hot."

"My _tongue_ is _blue_?"

Lex chuckled. "Hadn't you noticed? You're so lovely. Blond hair, beautiful smile, blue tongue…"

"Stop it!" But she was not insulted. So, he thought she was lovely. Despite or maybe because of the inky tongue. Well…

Suddenly Lex frowned. "Chloe. I have to tell you something."

Eep? 

"Wh-what?"

"You know what I said about my pasta never being soggy?"

"Yee—es?"

Lex cast his eyes down. "I lied. I forgot to turn off the spaghetti. It must be thoroughly ruined by…"

Chloe interrupted him with uncontrollable peels of laughter.

A quarter of an hour later they were sitting at the kitchen table, devouring soggy pasta with delicious vegetarian tomato and vegetable sauce and cheese. Chloe sat in a haze of pleasant soreness, alcohol, sex and hot shower, content with herself and all the world. In the back of her head, Fred Durst was blaring _It's all about the Nookie_!, accompanied by violins and bird song.

"So this is what they call afterglow," Lex mused aloud while he studied her over a forkful of pasta. "Interesting. I knew I was good but I keep amazing myself." He grinned hugely.

"Glad to see you're so pleased with yourself, Mister Luthor."

"I was kind of hoping you were pleased with me, too."

She laughed. "I am. But…What now?"

Lex sobered, but the smile didn't leave his face. "Now, we finish dinner, and then you can either stay or I can take you back to your place."

"Just like that?" Was she disappointed? No. Simply curious.

Lex must have read her mind again, for he nodded. "Just like that. You're more than welcome to stay. For the evening, or for the whole night. But…"

"But you actually have some work to do?"

"No, I don't. If you stay, we could watch some DVDs. And my bed's big enough. However, tell me if I'm wrong, but I never got the impression that you were madly in love with me."

Now why did she feel guilty? "Nor are you with me," she shot back, and he nodded.

"You're fun to be around, you're smart and witty, and you're far cuter than you seem to think yourself, but no, I don't love you. And trust me when I say that after two disastrous marriages before I was twenty-five, I'd much rather have a good friend than another failed relationship."

Something warm and light made the spaghetti float in Chloe's stomach.

"Friends," she said.

"Lovers, occasionally, if you want," Lex added. Again he gave her his self-satisfied smirk. She grinned back.

"So you won't send me earrings?"

"I haven't sent anyone earrings in a very long time. And I'd most certainly send them to you. I could send you roses but if you're as bad with flowers as you once told me…"

"I'd love it if you sent me roses," Chloe said, blushing.

"Ok," said Lex. "Stick our your tongue for me. Oh come on, just do it! Damn…it's gone."

And so ended the Spaghetti incident. Lex had brought her home some time after ten, and had left five minutes later. The next day, she had found an envelope on her desk at the Planet with her recorder in a bubble bag, and a sheaf of papers holding a typed-out report of what had been discussed after she and Lex had left. It also held a small note card.

_Chloe,_

_I found out that the entire conference was taped and transcribed for the archive. I got you the last hour. Good luck rising out of the basement._

_L._

When she came home that evening, her neighbor burst out of the door before Chloe had had the chance to put her key in the lock, hauled her into her own apartment and showed her a monstrous bunch of roses that had been delivered to Ms. Sullivan during the day. A similar little blank card was tucked away between the stems.

_To Miss Sullivan_, it read in Lex's rather jumbled handwriting, _according to promises made over pasta._

She still kept that note as a page marker. And whenever she had to go and visit a conference, she made sure she brought a Bic pen and not a fine liner, and had things to stuff into her mouth in case another speaker had a hair piece.

She put her key into the ignition and drove off.

TBC

Ok, here's my end note. As you can see, I really suck at porn. I always have to laugh. Like I said at the beginning, I wasn't planning on writing sex, just a little bit of eroticism, but of course it didn't go that way, and after three tries I just went with it. Of course, now we have cool, slick, in control Lex (I hope he was cool enough?). Which will later become crushed, fumbling, bad lay Lex. evil grin . Aaahhh…Anyone any other ideas how to torture him? Of course I have my own plans but I'm always ready to be inspired 


	10. Chapter 10

Heh. Glad you enjoyed it, Jen  Pr0n's not really my forte, I'm better at banter and horribly violent situations and angst, but hey, it was fun trying it out again. Ten: In which the stage is prepared 

After sitting at the breakfast table for some minutes toying with his toast, Lex decided to take Chloe's advice and sleep for a few more hours. The voice of his father spoke sternly in his head, but he pushed it back and locked it behind one of the doors in his mind. Yes, Luthors didn't give in to weakness but damn it, the thought alone of turning on his laptop sent spikes of agony through his eyes. He took his paracetamols like a good boy, dragged his weary carcass back up the stairs and was pleasantly surprised to find his bed changed, made up and ready for sleep. Really, household staff was not to be frowned upon! Strange, he'd never really noticed before. They worked incredibly fast. Maybe he should give them a raise for Christmas.

It was only a little past seven; outside, it was as dark as deepest night. Briefly, he thought about Chloe driving in that pitch dark, and hoped she'd be ok. She probably was. Why shouldn't she be? The dark inspired his body to hibernate, making his bed even more desirable. He could sleep until nine, check in with Mary, and then get some more work done on the China project. And Smith. He shouldn't forget about Chloe's informant. And the LuthorCare business. But first, sleep. He'd barely been up for an hour but already his batteries were running low.

"Even those bunnies keep it up longer," he grumbled to himself, and crawled back into bed, shivering as the cool sheets touched his arms. "Luthor batteries are supposed to outlast Duracell."

His usual position—sprawled all over the bed, taking up as much space as possible and hiding the fact that a bed this size was actually meant to hold two persons—didn't work; it made his back hurt, and he couldn't get warm this way. So he curled up into a tiny ball that barely covered one fourth of the mattress, tucked the duvet up and under and all around him like a little nest and closed his eyes. Almost immediately sleep grabbed him and pulled him under like the Kraken in a hot sea, where fish danced to the tune of the tide between the coral reefs.

He was woken, gasping and completely disoriented, by a sharp knock, and only when it was repeated he realized where he was, who he was, and where the sound came from.

"Yes?" he rasped, casting a quick glance at his alarm clock. It just flicked to 10:12—he'd forgotten to set it. James opened the door and entered, holding a tray with Lex's mobile on it.

"Someone called, sir. I wasn't sure if you expected a call, or if it would be urgent." He paused, studying his employer with a slight frown. When Lex did not respond, as he was trying to fit in James' appearance into his dreams of uninhabited islands and boiling seas, the butler took a few steps towards the bed and asked, "Are you quite alright, sir?"

"What?" Lex rubbed his forehead. It felt hot and dry, as if there was a small fire burning in the middle of his skull. Heat. Bad for the processor. He should probably have some ventilators installed. "Yes, I'm fine. Thank you."

He took the phone from the tray, absentmindedly marveling about the presence of a butler who brought him his own phone on a tray. James also did that with any letters Lex hadn't picked up himself: put them on a silver dish and offer them like…like…cookies, or something. He checked his information; the missed call was from Mary. Sighing, he pressed the 'return call' button. James silently, unobtrusively, floated out of the room, backwards.

Mary picked up after the first ring.

"Good morning, Lex."

"Good morning." He cleared his throat, but sleeping had done it more harm than good, he was even hoarser than before.

Mary made a sound that could either be sympathetic or completely unsympathetic. "Are you still ill, sir?" She had the charming habit to call him by his first name—which, since she was about twenty years older than him, was only natural—but dropping a sir here and there when she was actually berating him.

"I believe so," he muttered. _Headache, check. Shaking hands, check. Voice like bad porn actor, check. Did I ever witness a storm on the island? Did I really build a boat or was that another hallucination?_

"Right. Lex, is it true that you let that wo—Miss Sullivan from the Planet interview you?"

"Chloe?" _Move it!_ he screeched at the sluggish mass of syrup that was his train of thought. "Yes…Yes, I did, this morning. Why?"

"Lex…" she all but moaned, "You can't cancel all your interviews and then do only one of them after all. Not without consulting me and giving me a rood explanation to feed the other papers."

"What? She's already published it?" he asked dumbly. "Impossible, she can't even have reached Metropolis yet."

"Actually, she has," Mary said, "Nothing's printed yet. But she did call some of her colleagues and you know how it goes in that little vile world. Lex…sir…please don't take PR into your own hands."

'_Lex, sir, if you tell me you're sick, don't sleep around with innocent reporters and then give them an interview, damn it, you spoilt brat!'_

Even without seeing her facial expression, he knew her so well he could practically hear her silent yell through the phone. He opened his mouth to say that he hadn't slept with her, that she'd just come round and been the sweetest pillow he'd had for a very long time, but forced his mouth shut. "I'm sure you can fix it," he said coolly.

She sighed. "Yes. I gave them some story of you having an urgent online meeting with your man in China. Unfortunately, Miss Sullivan is rather difficult to fit in. Sir, you really shouldn't…"

Pause.

Lex smiled. Let's see how she voiced this without telling him straight that he was a disgrace.

"It really isn't wise to…"

Pause.

"Yes, Mary?"

"Sir." He envisioned her in heel-clapping German soldier boots, trained defiance all over her stern face. "Please don't interfere with my job, sir. That's what I'm here for. I lie for you. That's what you're paying me for, and that's what I'm really good at. However, it's very difficult to come up with a convincing lie if you go behind my back. Please don't make my job impossible. And," her voice dropped to an urgent whisper, "please don't sleep with the media, sir, please! It always comes back to bite you."

"That's quite enough, thank you," Lex said curtly, though he was touched by her concern.

"Yes, sir."

"What did you tell the…who were they again?"

"The _Journal_, and _Metrophile_. I told them you ran into Miss Sullivan on your way to another meeting and had a very quick chat with her." Again she hesitated, but since she was one of those highly capable people who wasn't cowed by Luthor Authority, the pause didn't last long. "How did you manage to run in to her? Sir."

"She came over," Lex said, providing no background at all. Seconds ticked away while Mary waited for more information. Finally, when none proved forthcoming, she sighed.

"Fine. Could you at least tell me what you've told her?"

"Of course." He gave her almost exactly the same story as he'd given Chloe. She couldn't find anything wrong in it; it was the bland truth, unprettified by exciting facts or lies, dry and unpalatable like the sand on a tropical island beach.

_There **was** a storm, I think, at one time, but I can't recall whether it was in my head or outside. There was a lot of lightning, lots of crackling lightning bolts that filled the air with the scent of ozone. And thunder, like earth quakes in the sky…_

"Lex?"

He coughed. "I'm still here. Is there anything else?"

"The usual requests and invitations."

"You can cancel every appointment in the coming two days. Reschedule them to next week."

"Ok." The woman was so efficient she didn't even question him. "Even the conference in Maine, on Friday? You are supposed to speak there." Or maybe just a little.

"_Especially_ the conference in Maine," said Lex. He'd forgotten all about the conference anyway, thanks to his fine new non-meteor freakishness. Maybe he should take a turn to the common. Keep an organizer with him.

"I'll call them and tell them you have unfortunately been called away on pressing business. Unless I can tell them you're ill…"

"No, you can't," Lex said wearily. "Tell them it's business." The moment Lionel got hint of his son calling in sick, he'd start a mutiny that would make the Bounty look like a cruise ship. "Now, unless you've got anything else that can't wait until next Monday…"

"No, sir." Again a pause, then, "I hope you'll feel better soon."

He laughed. "I hope so too. Thanks, Mary. And well done."

"My pleasure, sir."

He closed the phone, tapped it against his chin. He wanted nothing more than to curl up again and sleep some more, but there was too much to do. Too many mysteries to solve, too many children dying to close his eyes and ignore them…so he crawled out of bed, splashed a couple of handfuls of cold water into his face, swallowed two of those gay pink ibuprofen pills and installed himself on the couch in the study.

Ten minutes after he touched down, a huge pot of tea appeared—by magic, it seemed to him at first, until he just caught the slips of James' jacket float out of view. Huh. The man could have made a fortune as a magician. No one would notice him removing women's underwear. Adding a healthy dose of brandy to his tea, Lex started the day for the second time.

He ran the names he had taken from the LuthorCare list he'd sent to Chloe and ran them through the Smallville people index (which cost him a bit of hacking but nothing strenuous). These were the people that had once been employed on the Kansas Greenhouse level 33.1, testing out mental stimulants on a handful of homeless volunteers. It wouldn't do to get her anywhere near those names.

Then he checked his mail, answered an outraged message from Mister Wong from China, sighed over yet another lawsuit hanging over his head, wrote a budget plan for one of his corporations and approved the notes of four meetings.

By then it was twelve-thirty and his headache was blooming like a malevolent flower. He took more ibuprofen, had a very modest lunch and took an unplanned cat-nap on the couch. He was woken by the pinging of his laptop; the names had all been checked against the Smallville data, and nothing of interest had come out.

At four, his phone started acting up again, and he spent the next 45 minutes in conversation with various people, discussing subjects that ranged from dinner parties to test results to dates that should be reserved for appearances in court.

Scanlan called him to say that his blood test had come back, and that it was, as he had expected, fine, as far as normal people could be considered fine. He spoke with glee about the presence of the flu virus, that had been dormant at the time Lex had stepped into his office.

"No sign of any kind of…poison?" Lex asked tentatively. He'd been pronounced fully cured of Lionel's little attempt at filicide half a year ago, but with the luck he was having these days it would be typical to find himself in an early grave because his immune system gave out.

"Poison?" Scanlan repeated, then, more firmly, "Ah, poison. No. Not a trace. Your blood is clean; apart from the flu you have a perfectly clean bill of health."

He was just gulping down more tea-diluted whiskey when the phone rang again, and he answered it with a sigh.

"Lex Luthor."

"Hello Lex," a warm woman's voice spoke. "This is Valerie Decan. I…uh, opportunistically added your number to my phonebook when you called a few days ago. I hope you don't mind me calling."

Lex didn't, not really. "I guess it's only fair," he said, "since I have your number too. How can I help you?"

There was a rustle in the background—the phone against her hair, he guessed, or the collar of her blouse. "I'm with the kids at the moment," she began.

"How are they? I didn't get my update yet."

"How they are? Most of them are no worse off than before, and with the very sick children moved to quarantine the others aren't constantly reminded of what's happening…but especially the older ones, Jessica, Beatrice, Michael and Lisa…They're worried and uncomfortable."

"And Emmy?" he asked, even though he was afraid to know.

Valerie sighed. "She's still alive. She's reacting well to the new treatment, but it makes her nauseous and she can't keep anything inside. We're feeding her intravenously now, but she's very frail…Still, she's alive and that's more than we were expecting last night."

"That bad?" Lex murmured, feeling an odd cramp in his stomach. Poor girl. Poor, beautiful girl with her wide blue eyes.

"Jessica was asking for you," Valerie continued. "For some reason she seemed to be worried about you."

"About me?" Children were so very, very amazing. "Why?"

"I wouldn't know. But they'd all like it if you could come by again. And like I said, Jessica…I don't know what it is that's bothering her, but it has something to do with you."

"Did she remember anything about Amy's disappearance, perhaps?"

"No," Valerie said slowly, "No, I don't think it has anything to do with Amy. It's you. I know it's much to ask, and you're probably very busy, but do you think you could come by and talk to her?"

"Of course," Lex agreed, already pushing himself to his feet. "I'm in Smallville now, but I can make it in…" He dropped down again. "No. I can't come."

"It doesn't need to be right now, tonight, or tomorrow…"

"I can't."

"I understand if you're busy, but…"

"I'm not," Lex interrupted her, annoyed by both her tendency to keep on fishing. "I have time to spare, at the moment. It's just that they wouldn't let me in." _Ok, you can say it. You won't turn into salt or anything_. "I have the flu."

"The flu? You?"

"Yes," Lex said irritably, "Me. I probably caught it from you."

"How…unexpected." The pleading note had left her voice; now she sounded uncomfortably like a researcher. "I didn't think you were every ill. After all, they based the treatment on your healing ability, which was to say the least spectacular." She trailed off, and he could swear he heard the clicking of cogs in her head. He spared her the trouble.

"Yes, it was, until I met Amy."

"Amy. Amy…Oh god, she did it to you as well?"

"Don't you watch television?" Lex asked dryly. "Didn't you see my flowing locks?"

"You've grown hair?"

So she didn't watch TV, or she was less daunted by him than he'd hoped for and hadn't noticed he was now a red-head. And damn, she sounded horribly like Chloe.

"Yes."

"And you immediately caught the flu."

"Yes."

"But your blood…"

"I just had the test results back. I'm as healthy as a…" Blank. "as can be. I just get sick, like everyone else, and that's why I can't come over." _Apart from the fact that I really don't want to drive for two and a half hours at the moment_. He shivered at the thought of sitting in the same position for longer than ten minutes, and of having to concentrate on the road. While it was snowing. He rubbed his eyes.

"I should be better by Saturday. Or at least no longer contagious, if I can believe the internet. If you don't mind I could come by LuthorCare at twelve."

"I'm working there on Saturday anyway," she said. "That would be great. I'm really concerned about Jessica—although she might just be worried about you, and nothing else. The parents won't come until two, so you'd have almost two hours to talk to them. The children, I mean."

"Fine, then." Lex made a mental note to notify Mary of his appointment. She might become vicious otherwise. "I'll see you there."

Valerie said goodbye, her tone once again warm: a woman who'd gotten what she wanted, which was an appointment between him and her kids, this time. He only hoped he really would feel better by Saturday. At the moment, he rather wished he was back in bed.

"Samson reversed," he scoffed aloud, rubbing his hand over his spiky head. "Wouldn't you _love_ the symbolism, Dad?"

The phone rang again. With a deep sigh, he took another swig of whiskey-tea and answered it.

Chloe drove back through the simultaneously darkening and lightening city of Metropolis, sighing at the traffic. As night descended on the city, lamppost flickered on, windows glowed yellow, Christmas lights started to twinkle and a long snake of car lights wound itself around the blocks.

"You have to see the beauty of it," Chloe told herself as she inched forwards. The woman in the car in front of her was shouting at someone sitting in the back; a child, probably, because Chloe couldn't see the person's head. That woman was having a much harder time than Chloe, who was driving on her own, with the radio on, her mind pleasantly bruised after listening to interesting but heavy material the entire afternoon. She felt languid and safe in her car, and since she'd had the foresight to bring a package of Oreos she was peckish but not starving.

My, but that was some family row they were having in the station wagon in front of her. A tiny fist shot up in the air, its shrimp-like middle finger protruding. The mother's mouth opened even wider, so wide something that looked pretty much like a Barbie's head hit her full in the teeth. Chloe giggled.

"Children. Gotta love 'em."

They moved another yard. If she was lucky she might make it through the traffic light the next time it turned green. Chloe popped another cookie into her mouth.

The evening was spread open in front of her, like a sandwich she could top with whatever filling she chose. What filling to choose, though? Should she be sociable and hang out with her friends? Or work on her figure and hit the gym? Or, and even as the thought entered her head her entire body agreed enthusiastically, should she take an outrageously long, hot bath, couch-potato in front of the TV and watch some non-stimulating chickflick, like _Four Weddings and a Funeral_, _Bridget Jones's Diary_ or anything else with Hugh Grant in it?

The bath was a definite yes. Hugh Grant…she'd have to think about it. _Sex and the City_ was also nice, and required even less brainpower. Or _Coupling_. She'd never liked _Friends_, because all the women were dumb, and none of them was bigger than size M. M for Minuscule.

She whooped as she managed to pass the traffic light, then sighed when another traffic jam clogged her way. Ah well. She might just as well call Lex and see how he was holding up.

Clark, she'd already found out by phone message, had returned safe and sound, bringing with him a memory stick full of hopefully incriminating evidence, or at least information about the identity of their Orizon contact, the elusive Mr. Jones. Or Tippitt. Chloe, thought mildly interested in Lois' investigation, wasn't planning to offer her her computer skills—at least not this evening. Tonight was bathing night; she'd got up way earlier than she was used to, this morning, and she was tired after a hard day's work.

"And I want Ben & Jerry's for desert," she said aloud, although there was no one present to tell her off for her gluttony. "New York Super Fudge Chunk. Or Chocolate Fudge Brownie? Hmmm. Choices, choices. Maybe both. Yes, that'd work…"

While the driver in front of her (a balding old man, this time, in an equally balding, or varnishless Volkswagen) refused close the nine feet to the next car and stubbornly remained where he was standing, Chloe selected Spaghetti and pressed the green phone button.

He picked up after two rings. "Hello Chloe."

He was as hoarse as yesterday, but at least he'd taken the time to check who was calling. That was an improvement at least.

"Hey Lex. How're you doing?"

"Fine." Evasively. "How was your conference?"

"Interesting. I didn't know those mobile breast cancer check-up vans dumped their waste into the sewers, did you? Anyway, there was this French professor who couldn't pronounce the h, and he spoke AND looked almost exactly like Inspector Clouseau from the Pink Panther…" She laughed.

Lex chuckled as well. "So did you bite through any pens?"

"No, I brought chewing gum. Next time I should bring apples, get my vitamins at the same time as my comedy cravings. But yeah, it was ok. How about you? How's your poor head?"

"Well," said Lex, slurring a little, "Let's put it this way. If I were a computer, I used to be a hexa-core Pentium and now I've been downgraded to a crippled 486." He coughed.

"You need a virus scanner," Chloe smiled.

Lex made a sound of disgust. "What I need is more RAM. The random appearance of my screensaver whenever I'm trying to do something is driving me crazy."

"As long as it isn't affecting your hard drive or your floppy drive," Chloe giggled, enjoying the analogy. The old man in front of her finally decided that fifteen feet was a wide enough space to warrant releasing his brakes and crawling forward to meet front to back with the next car. She followed, and stood still again.

Lex snorted. "It's the software that's causing me problems at the moment. You can leave my hard drive out of it."

"Maybe you should just turn the whole thing off and let it cool down for a while?"

"Tried that; it doesn't work, the bloody thing heats up again in no time. I tried smacking it, but that doesn't work either."

"You still have a fever?"

"Fever? I thought we were talking about computers."

"Lex."

"Why is everyone so focused on my temperature? I swear even my house keeper was trying to feel me up…uh…feel my forehead. No. She didn't try to feel me up. She wouldn't. Motherly feelings only."

"Lex. You're rambling. Just take your temperature and tell me what it is."

"…It's her daughter that's starting to give me the creeps. Why is it that house keepers always have fifteen-year-old daughters that get a crush on me? Maybe I should let James spread the rumor that I'm gay. That should free me from headstrong virgins…"

Chloe waited a few seconds. His silence sounded kind of hopeful. "You haven't made me forget about the thermometer, if that's what you're hoping for," she finally said, and he sighed.

"Oh, fine."

There was a crackling sound. "What are you doing, Lex? You're supposed to put it in your mouth, or ear, or…I don't know."

"I have to unpack it first, if I want to put it anywhere," Lex snapped. "Which I don't. I hope you'll remember that I'm doing this to satisfy YOUR curiosity."

"I will, I will, and I'm deeply grateful."

"Hm," huffed Lex, but she could hear the smile in his voice. "Ok. I think I'm supposed to put this in my mouth. How ammoying. How'm I fuppofed oo have a felephone comferfafion this way?"

God, he sounded just like Lois with her cigarette. "You don't. Is it on? You have to turn it on, first."

"Whap oo you fink I am, a mowon? Of courfe ipf on."

Chloe laughed aloud at the 'mowon'. The Volkswagen's traffic indicator blinked on the right side, and she heaved a sigh of relief. At least that horrible driver would go another way. She moved the phone to her other ear, just in time to hear a soft beep on the other side of the line.

"What was that?"

"I think it's got what it wanted," Lex said dryly. "Must be feminine then. Now, let's see. Pay attention, will you, because I will say this only once."

"Yes, Herr Flick."

"It was the Resistance girl, not the Gestapo guy. So…It says 38.2."

"What?!"

"Hang on, that's degrees Celsius. So that is about…100.8 Fahrenheit. That isn't so bad, right?"

"It's almost two degrees higher than it should be. Jesus Christ, Lex, don't you know what's a healthy temperature for a body?"

"98.8?"

She sighed. Lex laughed, and then began to cough.

"Serves you right," she grumbled.

"_Mea culpa_."

"Don't you go quoting scripture to me."

"_Mea culpa_ isn't…Never mind."

"You ARE slow."

"Hey! We just established that I'm two degrees too hot for my processor to work correctly, so cut me some slack."

"I'm glad you're feeling better, Lex."

"I'm not. But I'm glad I can once again fool you into thinking that I am."

Chloe winced at that, even though he delivered the words with an audible smile. Yes, he did do that, fooling people into thinking he was fine while he was everything but fine. Then again, if that was the price one had to pay for being the richest man under thirty alive, she guessed there were worse things. Like spending your Honeymoon on an desolate island knowing that your wife had left you there. Or trying to get your own father behind bars. Or being locked up by said father because he'd rather have you mad than dead. _I don't think you can fool me ever again, sweetie. But if you want me to, I can pretend you can._

She took a left turn, forcefully pushing those thoughts aside. Lex didn't want her pity. It would do no one any good feeling sorry for him for other reasons than that he was sick and too busy for his own good, so she concentrated on driving and the prospect of her evening of female delight.

Her turn brought her into a blessedly quiet street. Thank god. She could have her bath in less than half an hour. Wait, first she had to get ice cream. And she didn't have any food left in the fridge either. Darn.

"Lex, I'm almost home. I have to hang you up and park."

"Hands-free is such a marvelous concept. But that's fine, go and park, I have some things to do myself."

"Like going to bed early?" Chloe suggested.

Lex sighed wistfully. "Like calling China, more likely."

"Don't call the man's daughter a pig again."

"_That_ was just a figure of speech. I never did that, really. Chinese is just a very complicated language…Anyway, thanks for calling. Remember, 100.8. Write it down somewhere. I wonder how high those things can register…Maybe I'll hang it in my tea for a while."

Chloe laughed. "I don't think they're made for such temperatures."

"It's tepid."

"It will break, Lex."

"Good!"

"Speaking of tea, do you want to go for coffee during the weekend, if you're feeling up to it? Or are you busy?"

Lex fell silent for a while, and she knew, she just _knew_ he had somehow detected the false innocence in her voice. And sure enough, he said, "Smith sent you something new, I take it?" and all the warmth had left his voice.

"That's not the reason I want to have coffee with you," she tried to salvage the conversation, but since it was already at the point of being ended, she was doomed to fail.

"Of course not," he said wearily. "You always have different reasons."

"Lex…" She'd found a parking spot but didn't want to hang up yet, desperate to let him know that she didn't want to see him to accuse him of anything but that she still was a reporter, and that Smith, damn him, was sending currents through all her strings, making her jerk like a marionette. "Lex…"

"I have to go."

"Damn it, listen to me! I can't help being what I am, and yes, he sent me something new. But I want to have coffee with you because I like having coffee with you, and that's why I want to have coffee with you. If you don't want to discuss Smith's stuff, that's fine with me, I still want to have coffee. Ok?"

"The only thing I got," Lex said slowly, "was the word 'coffee'."

Phew. That awfully cold, distant tone was gone. "So we're going out for coffee?"

"We'll see," Lex said coolly. Then, more friendly, "I still have to go. I'll call you if I'm in Metropolis during the weekend, alright?"

"Sure!"

"Good night, Chloe."

"Good—." The phone went dead. Chloe took a deep breath, feeling as if she'd kicked him while he was down, and as if he'd kicked her back just as hard, neither of them knowing exactly why they were fighting. Had this been a fight? Not exactly. Then why did it feel like one?

"Maybe I shouldn't ask him anything at all and just investigate by myself like I did when I was young and reckless," she murmured while she parked her car. "After all, I got some spectacular results in those days. Not to mention exposed to all kinds of toxins, radiations and violent madmen. Huh."

Sighing, she crept out of her car, checked for her wallet, and moved off to the supermarket around the corner. She'd need to consume at least a gallon of Ben & Jerry's IN the bath to get her poise back.

Men.

At least she'd managed to get him use that thermometer.

Men.

Never one to stay down for long, Chloe chuckled.

TBC


	11. Chapter 11

Ok, this one took me longer than expected.

Eleven: In which Chloe investigates and Lex fights the future 

Thursday morning, 9 A.M.. Chloe sat perched on the edge of Clark's desk, developing a crick in her neck while she stared at Clark's computer. She ought to be working out her notes about the conference, but Lois had called her up and here she was, watching Clark sort through the files he'd stolen from Jones' computer.

At least they were sure it was Jones', not Tippitt's—although Jones was a wild guess, too, as Clark was just demonstrating.

"I couldn't open or copy any files," he said, fingers typing busily, sometimes so fast Chloe discreetly nudged his shoulder to make him slow down. "They were all password protected and I hadn't brought anything that could crack them. I did get this, though. His email. He had it open on his computer; it's a yahoo account."

Chloe whistled. If Jones had his online email provider open on screen…it meant that he'd been in the house when Clark had breezed in and copied his files. _Good grief, Kent, how did you do that? Was he in the bathroom or something? Or are you so fast these days that he didn't even see you while he went to pour himself a drink?_

Clark and Lois, oblivious, stared at the screen, and Clark clicked through a list of email messages. "This is everything I could find, inbox, outbox, saved, sent and deleted messages, sub-folders and everything; he either doesn't use this address very often or he cleans it up every few days." He opened a sub-folder named _Forwarded_. "Buuuuut…apparently, he forwards things. To himself. Look at this: he has over 20 email addresses. I think this is his memo address, or something; where he sends all his email conversations before saving them to disk so he won't forget about them when he's deleted them from the other mail servers."

"That's pretty smart, Smallville," Lois praised. "I think you might be right about that."

"Gee, thanks, Lois," Clark said sarcastically. He was, however, too excited about his findings to take serious offence. "Now, look here," He opened one of the messages, gave the girls some time to read it, closed it and opened another, and another.

"He signs with a different name each time," Chloe said. Her stomach was doing flips, making her feel queasy. "Can you give us an overview? Wait, let me." She pushed Clark away from the computer, took his place and worked her digital magic. Within a minute a list of items appeared on screen. Jones, or whatever his real name was, had been a busy man; there were sixteen emails, all generated in the past four days. All signed with different names: Jones, Smith, White, Black, Doe, Johnson, etc, etc.

Lois pointed to one of them. "That's my address. He sent this one to me as Jones. Remember Clark, it's the one telling us that Tippitt was moving."

Chloe nodded. "And that one is to me," she said, opening the message. "I got it two days ago. Your contact and mine _are_ the same."

"I didn't know someone was feeding you info about something," Lois said with a funny twitch of her nose. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Chloe avoided looking at her. "I didn't think it was important. It turned out to be false information anyway."

The attachment had been removed when Clark copied the list, but it was still referred to as attachments: Svplantlvl3.pdf, Ozoncorplvl3.pdf, TSClvl3.pdf . She browsed through the other emails. Most receivers were unknown to her, but sometimes she'd recognize a journalist's name, and once a lawyer's name. "What about his Sent items?"

"He only has two," Clark said, pointing as she clicked and opened the folder. "And these are older. He must have forgotten to throw them away. Huh, I hadn't noticed, but these seem to be to the same person, and he's sent them from this address."

Chloe opened the mail. Lois, reading over her shoulder, gah-ed. "Well, that isn't at all revealing." Chloe sighed, agreeing. The first mail was a reply to a previous mail; unfortunately, Smith/Jones had deleted the text of that mail, or had disabled the Show previous message contents option. It provided the following exciting information:

_B,_

_It's case number 11.201. Room 1B. The hearing was moved to Wednesday, 11.30 am. Pres. Judge Harrisson. Didn't they notify you? Can you still make it?_

_M._

"Who knows," Chloe said optimistically, "Maybe he gives all his personal details in the next one. If B decided to book a holiday to the Bahamas for the both of them, he or she'd need at least a name and a personal number, right?"

Wrong. The second mail was even more cryptic:

_B,_

_That makes 18. Damn him._

_M._

"What is this guy, a lawyer?" Lois wondered. "Wednesday, Wednesday…There must be a way we can check which case they were doing on Wednesday…What's the date of that mail?"

"The fourteenth. September."

"On a Wednesday late September, under Presiding Judge Harrisson."

"I'll bet you one thing," Chloe said. She was skimming the emails, skimming the names of the attachments.

"What?"

"It'll be a case against LuthorCorp or any of their sister organizations." She tapped on the computer screen. "This mail? It's to Billy Denver. I know him, he's a lawyer. I used to have lunch with him when he was still in college. Smith—who calls himself Black, here, by the way, sent him a whole bunch of files that all start with LC- and then some number. In his mail he's talking about some illegal practice LuthorCorp's involved with. I can't see what's in the attachments anymore, but it's probably files from some project they're working on. And this person…I don't know her, but he's asking her whether she'd testify in a hearing. I wouldn't be surprised if it was in another State vs. Luthor case."

"Against LuthorCorp, huh?" Lois smiled. "I suddenly like him much better. Look at the number of people he's been mailing! If he's sending classified LuthorCorp information to every one of them…well, he might very well be my hero!"

Chloe said nothing, frowning. _If someone's breaking the law, doing something criminal, yeah, then it's good if someone does something about it. But this looks more like an obsession. Who on earth is this 'M', and why's he doing this? And where does he get all that information?_

Lois had stolen her mouse and was randomly clicking on emails. "Hey Chlo? If this really is some sort of memo folder for him, he must have added BCCs to himself to his emails. I have to see if there's a BCC somewhere in this list. Do you know how to detect that?"

"No, I'm not that digi-savvy. You'll have to ask Chris from the basement. He's good with email things. Although when it comes to BCCs…Well, he might be able to get something out of it."

"I'll go and extort," Lois said happily. She left with a sashaying gait. Clark followed her with his eyes, one of his eyebrows rising.

"Well, it certainly improves her mood."

Chloe smiled. Lois and Clark's relationship, or rather partnership, amused her to no end. They bickered constantly, either walking off in a huff every other moment. But sometimes Lois would be surprised by something Clark said or did in typical Clark-fashion: come to some incredibly smart conclusion, or say something unexpectedly sharp and funny. It would startle her into laughter and grin at him with camaraderie and affection. Her friendliness, in turn, brutally smashed all Clark's reservations towards Lois and made him behave like he did towards all people who treated him like what he really was, which was a charming goofball with far above average intelligence, whose attraction was much more than just a gorgeous face and a body to die for: sincere sweetness. Clark was such a nice boy, really.

Or Lois would suddenly drop her cynical mask and display her not inconsiderable capacity for compassion when it came to some of the subjects of her articles. She hardly ever cried, but when she had, once, over an eight year old girl who'd just died while she miscarried, both her tears and later her steely determination to see the offender behind bars had given Clark a glimpse of a truly remarkable Lois, and he'd been awestruck by what he'd seen for three days.

Of course, Lois only had to call him Smallville once and he'd lapse back into being exasperated with her, while any random remark of Clark's could make Lois sigh, pat his shoulder in a condescending manner and declare him a lesser life form again.

It was interesting, really, in an incomprehensible way. A bit like a battle between exotic fish. Chloe wondered if they even had a clue that they actually liked one another.

She turned to Clark. "How on earth did you manage to copy all this? He was there when you did, wasn't he?"

He grinned. "In the kitchen. I slipped in while he was on the toilet, sneaked into the kitchen, hid his beer opener and put the stick in his computer. I was afraid I wouldn't get it for a little while, because it took his computer aaages to copy everything to my stick."

Clark unchangingly typed his articles in eight minutes. He needed five minutes to organize his thoughts and structure his sentences, then ten seconds to actually type his stories, and two minutes and fifty seconds until the computer had caught up with his keystrokes and processed his texts. It had never occurred to Chloe that the slow processing rate of computers, compared to Clark's super speed, might also prove a hindrance when it came to copying private information.

"But you managed. Well done!"

"Yeah. I had to blow over some of his books in another room, but then I got it out again. He never noticed a thing." Proud and happy Clark was infinitely huggable.

"And did you see him? I mean, close up?"

Clark nodded.

"What'd he look like? Was he blond? With blue eyes and very light eyelashes?"

"Yes!" Clark exclaimed, surprised. "How did you know?"

"Because I saw Smith face to face. He gave me those files about…he gave me some files in person." She hesitated. "I'm seeing him again on Saturday."

Instantly, Clark's cheerful face turned serious. "Are you sure? It might be dangerous. I mean, meeting a contact is one thing, but this…I haven't ever seen anything like this. It's like a…a crusade." He paused, studied her.

His eyes were on her so long she began to feel itchy. "Do I have a brain tumor, Clark?"

He flushed. "No, sorry. I was just thinking. Those files Smith, or Jones, or M gave you. They were about LuthorCorp as well, weren't they?"

She nodded. "Yes. And they were false. Well, not false exactly, but they didn't prove what he claimed, either."

"And what was that?"

"That Lex was experimenting on those Cancer kids."

Clark looked shocked. "Of course not."

"Wow. That's a very welcome yet uncommonly positive reaction to something Lex-related."

He snorted. "Trust me, I wouldn't put anything past Lex, but experimenting on children? With cancer? I think the cancer fight's holy to him, and he's always kind of careful around children. He wouldn't do anything to hurt them. Now if he somehow hurt Jones—I mean M…that would be a completely different thing. I could believe Lex personally overseeing the total destruction of M's health, family, resources and land, but he'd be a fool to do anything with Cradle Cancer kids, and Lex may be a manipulative asshole but he's no fool."

Chloe smirked. "If I didn't know better I'd say you were in love."

"Oh, please!"

"Is there really not even a single tiny little piece of Clark Kent that is clamoring for one last chance to redeem the evil tyrant?" she asked, half teasingly, half hopefully. "You know, save the puppy even though it's stuck in a box in the middle of a lake of acid?"

Clark sighed. "Chloe…Lex is no puppy. He bites. You know what he's done! Hell, you were there when he set up that little plan of his to determine whether I was really indestructible!" He hushed his voice, frowning, and stared at his hand where they lay curled up on his knees. "I've given him chance after chance, but he's…I don't know. Morally impaired, or something. When he gets obsessed with something, everything else just has to go, nothing matters but him finding out how it works, no matter how. It isn't even that he doesn't know that what he's doing is wrong, it's that he can somehow just switch off his conscience and…He doesn't care!" He shook his head. "Even if I wanted to give it another try, which I don't, I don't think I could save him if I tried. I mean, he's brilliant, right? Then why can't he see that threatening people, and blackmailing them, and experimenting on them is bad, and that if he wants to be my friend, he should stop behaving like a _Luthor_?"

Chloe sighed. Well, she'd tried. And she got her answer. Clark was just as stuck in his Righteousness as Lex was in his level 3-creating Luthorness. She could kiss that Christmas dinner amongst _all_ her friends goodbye. _Then remains the second option: dine with Clark, Lana and Lois, then move to the penthouse and have sex against the window. If expertly organized, that should still be possible._

"Chloe?"

"Yah!"

"Are you really sure about meeting Smith again? Do you want me to tag along?"

She considered. "Nah, I don't think it's necessary. I mean, what could he do to me? We'll be sitting in a restaurant—although they do have VERY deep booths…But no, thanks, Clark. I'll be fine. And maybe it'll give me the chance to find out a little bit more about him. Find out who he is. What drives him. You know."

"Find out what Lex did to him—Lex or Lionel."

"No, it's Lex," Chloe said, remembering Smith's earlier words. "He definitely has it in for Lex." She checked her watch. "Where the hell is Lois? I really have to get back to my report!"

"And I have to get back to my football matches," Clark sighed. "Who could've thought I'd ever not enjoy going to a match?"

"You can always sabotage the ball," Chloe grinned, pointing at her eyes, "if it becomes boring."

"Chloe!" He laughed, but he was scandalized, she could tell. Tamper with the divine game! "I'd never do that!"

"I know." She rose from her seat, squeezed his shoulder. "I know." And that was what it came down to, basically. The big difference between Clark and Lex. Clark'd rather be bored to death than puncture the ball. And Lex totally would. And that made him less than ethical, yes, but it also made for a heck of a lot more fun during the game. "Tell me when you find out anything, will you? Although I guess I should ask Lois when it concerns M or Tippitt."

He nodded sadly. "It's football and openings all the way to Sunday, I'm afraid. I'll probably only come in to hand in my texts. I've been cutting it a little too tight, with appearing here only minutes after my match has ended. I guess I really should start using my car."

"The life of a hero…"

"The life of a _reporter_," Clark retorted. "Nothing heroic about football matches. Anyway, see you around, Chloe. And be careful."

"Sure!" she said brightly. Clark left. Chloe checked her watch. She really had to get back to her story, or Perry was going to skin her alive and hang his new prime Sullivan pelt in the lobby as an example of what happened to indolent Daily Planet reporters. Lois could take care of the rest of her email. Chloe could always ask her the details later. Decision made, she wrote a short note: _Had to go back to work_, and walked back down to her own floor.

That morning, Lex did the unimaginable: he slept in. Apparently his body was grateful for the respite, for when he woke up at ten he was again sticky with sweat, but he felt a hell of a lot better. All those annoying little aches and twinges were gone, his head didn't hurt at all anymore, and while he still felt a little weak, the stairs posed no problems, and breakfast actually looked appetizing again, instead of like another mountain to climb.

He fished the thermometer out of a now cold mug of tea, smiling because he knew that someone of the staff must have made a conscious decision to let it stand there. Unfortunately, the wretched thing had survived its hot bath. He shrugged and put it into his mouth while he started up his laptop, humming. When he read his temperature, a few emails later, he was happy to see that the fever was gone—although he was not at all surprised. He still didn't get the use of the thing. If you had a fever, you felt it, you didn't need any measuring device to tell you so. He gave the thermometer another lick. It tasted quite pleasantly of tea.

Feeling lazy, he let his duties lie for a moment, instead indulging in a bit of Jazz at the grand piano. He messed up with the really quick part, but only once, and he convinced himself that it was out of lack of practice, and not because his hands had become clumsier. Mozart went just fine. He couldn't remember the end of the Sonata, but thankfully his improvisation skills were also undamaged, and he flawlessly ended the piece with the final notes of John Lennon's _Imagine_.

When his mobile went off, he looked at the caller on the display and frowned when it read Decan. _What could she be calling for? One of the children? Emmy?_ He hastily answered it.

"Lex?" A child's voice, not Valerie's.

_What the hell? _"Who is this?"

"It's…it's Jessica."

"Jessica?" He couldn't quite keep the surprise out of his voice. "How did you get…?"

"I just wanted to know if you were ok," she said quickly. Her usually loud, confident voice now sounded tremulous and uncertain. "I didn't know how to reach you otherwise. But it's ok, I'll hang up…"

"No, wait. Wait, Jessica." He sat down on the loveseat in front of the hearth. "Why did you call me? It's ok, you can talk to me. How did you get Valerie's phone?"

"I kind of…took it…" Jessica murmured. "She left it on her desk when she was called away. She wouldn't call you again, yesterday, saying that you were ill and…I was so scared! I had to call you, I had to know you were ok. Not like…" She trailed off. "But you're ok."

"Yes, I'm fine. I just had the flu. Why were you scared?"

"Because…" she made a small whiny noise. "I can't tell you over the phone. It's that premonition thing—what makes me predict what card you're holding? It's changing. It's in my dreams! I'm getting these…flashes…and sometimes they really scare me!"

_Flashes_. He really didn't like the sound of this. "Have you spoken about this with Valerie?"

"No." She sniffled.

"Why not? Maybe she can help you."

"She couldn't explain my ability to read cards, why should she be able to explain this?" the girl said with typical child's logic.

"Then why do you want to see me?"

"Because you were in one!" she cried. "Just like Amy! And I didn't know, I didn't realize that it was a flash, I didn't even remember until I had that flash about you!" She took a deep breath. "I just wanted to make sure you were fine, and you are. You're coming to see us on Saturday, right? You'll come, right?"

The kid was almost hysterical. "Yes, I'll be there."

"Ok." Another breath. "Ok."

For some time, she just seemed to be holding the phone, breathing into it. Lex breathed back for a moment. Finally he asked, "Jessica? Are you alright over there?"

And quite unexpectedly, she began to cry.

"Jessica?"

"Michael's gonna die," she sobbed. "I saw him. Just a flash, but…He's gonna die. Today. With the sun on his face. They've moved him, you know, and they won't let me see him…"

The short hairs in Lex's neck all stood to attention; he felt goose bumps rise all over his body. Another Cassandra. One without touch. Jesus Christ, she _was_ another Cassandra!

"Jessica, listen to me. Listen to me, ok. How do you know he'll die today? What if it's…"

"Because it always happens within a few hours," she cried. "It's getting longer; first it was just a few seconds, like with the cards, but these flashes…they're from hours, sometimes a whole day from the moment I get them…And Michael…I had that flash about him…just a few minutes ago."

Lex bit his lip when she started to cry harder, with harsh sobs that crackled in the connection. Unable to reach out and pull her into his arms, Lex wrapped both hands around his cell. Christ, this was awful! Wasn't there anything he could do for that poor girl? Maybe go to her, show himself from behind the glass? But it wasn't about him, he was safe. What she needed was her mother, or her father, or at least someone to hold her and comfort her…

"Jessica. Jessica. It'll be alright."

Abruptly, the sound of her crying grew softer, and Valerie spoke into the telephone, "Who is this?"

"It's me," Lex said. "Lex."

"Lex? Why's Jessica…What's wrong, sweetie?" He assumed that last bit was directed at Jessica, "Why are you crying?"

"She called me," he said. "with your mobile. And she needs help. I think you need to call her parents."

"Right…Can I call you back later? I need to look after her now."

"Yes, by all means. Call me when she's calmed down."

Valerie disconnected, leaving Lex feeling very uneasy. He drew up his legs, rested his mouth against wrists crossed over one knee. _Why is it that people with the sight never see me skiing in the Swiss Alps? Why do they only see horrors? Unless, of course, Cassandra did see me skiing and I was so bad at it seeing it fried her brain._ The thought was not as comforting as he'd have liked. He hadn't cared much about the old woman in the old people home. He did care about the extraordinary girl in his care._ We'll have to change her treatment, this has to be stopped. I won't be responsible for turning her into another Sybil. _

It took about half an hour before Valerie called back; he answered her at the first ring.

"Is she alright?"

"She's…better," Valerie allowed. "I've given her a sedative, and her mother's here. She'll be ok now." She sighed. "I didn't have a clue. So much has happened since Amy was taken…I've been so busy with Michael and Tina and Emmy that…But why didn't she talk to me?!"

"What, exactly," Lex said, "is wrong with her? She was talking about having flashes. Prophesizing flashes, like the ones she had when foretelling cards, but farther in the future."

"Yes."

"And?"

"Today's the first time I heard about it."

"And what about Lisa? The girl whose eyesight improved so drastically? Has her ability changed as well? Can she see through walls now, or is she still normal?"

"I…"

"And what about the other children? The treatment seems to mainly bring out special abilities in girls, but what about the boys?"

"I don't know! I…"

"Damn it, Valerie! If you don't know, who does? How is it possible that that girl had to steal your bloody phone to call me because she was scared of something you should have noticed in the first place?! What the hell are you doing there if she's calling _me_ for reassurance?" He was so angry he could hardly keep his voice down.

"I'm sorry! It's just that…"

"I don't care if you're sorry, I want you to do something about it! Talk to them! They trust you. And have them tested. Test Jessica's eyes. I'll come over…" He coughed. "I'll come over on Saturday and talk to…" He had to stop and cough, or he'd choke. So he coughed until he could breathe and speak normally again. "I'll talk to Jessica. But I need to know if there are other side effects to this treatment. And I need you to find out for me. Do you understand?"

"Y-yes." Oh great, now he'd made her cry. "I'm sorry. I really am sorry to let you down. But…"

"It's ok." It wasn't. It wasn't by a long shot, but it wasn't her fault either. "I'm sorry for shouting at you. But I used to know someone in Smallville whose name very aptly was Cassandra, and she got the sight from the meteors too. It gave her the gift of divination but it also made her blind, and in the end, her visions killed her." _My vision killed her. _ "I don't want Jessica to end up like that because we've been neglectful."

"It…the visions killed her?"

"Yes. She was old, by that time, but still. Jessica should not be put through that. Consult the doctors—I believe you'll need to speak to James Marshall. See if she can be switched to the treatment that's based on my blood alone, not on the meteorites. I'm not sure if it's recommendable, looking at the children Amy's blocked, but we may have to take the chance."

"I will."

"And tell me how Michael's doing."

"Michael? Which one?"

"I don't know. Both. The one Amy touched."

"Michael Bouer. He's…not doing so well."

"Jessica told me she had a flash of him dying." Shocked silence. _With the sun on his face…_ Lex had his own flash of inspiration. "Valerie, to which room did you move Michael? Which side of the building?"

"The west side," she said immediately. "Room 23-21b."

Lex checked his watch. It was a far shot, but it was worth trying. "Move him to another room. A room without windows. If that's impossible, find a room with blinds that shut out all natural light."

"Ok. Can…can I ask why?"

"Because Jessica said he'd die with the sun on his face. Now, I don't know if this will work, but if there's no sun, he can't die with the sun on his face, can he now?"

"Right. Hang on, I'll arrange it straight away."

He listened while she spoke to various people, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair. His brain, no longer overheated, whirred like the wings of a humming bird. It was a wonderful feeling after two days with the mental capacity of a sea cucumber. If this worked, if a prophesy could be beaten…_If Jessica's vision do not necessarily mean to come true if measures can be taken against the possible outcome…_His mind reeled. _Then I could really change the future._

No. No. He should not think this way. He should focus on curing the poor girl of her terrible affliction. Her gift. Her curse. _But we should take her blood and save it for later study…_

"Ok, it's done. They'll move him in the next couple of minutes."

"Great." He paused. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." Again he heard the rustling sound of her hair as it brushed against her cell. He wondered what she looked like with her hair down. "And…I'm sorry. You're right, I should have noticed something was wrong with Jess. I want you to know that I am aware of that. It's just…they're all so afraid, you know? I'm not making excuses, but there are over two dozen children and only one me, with all the others still sick."

"I know," Lex said, keeping his voice soft. "I'm sure you're doing the best you can. Listen, Valerie, I have to go now. I'll talk to you on Saturday. No, call me. About Michael. When the sun is down."

"I will. Goodbye, Lex."

"Goodbye."

Michael Bouer did not die that Thursday. Valerie called Lex back at nine, saying that although he was very frail, the boy was still holding on. Lex, reclined on the couch with the thermometer in his mouth, willing his rekindled fever to go down, said a little prayer of thanks to the vague godhood he occasionally believed in, told Valerie she was a fantastic woman, and celebrated his theory proven right with two glasses of brandy.

He typed up business proposals for another two hours and then went to bed. If he were a bit woozy, he was happy to blame it on the brandy.

Friday slid by in a haze of after-flu languidness. Now his mind worked fine again, he got all his work done in the morning, and gave himself the afternoon off to get some exercise. Despite the lingering weakness in his arms and legs, his body was thrumming with the need to work out, as it was used to on Fridays. Unfortunately, running was out of the question, since the wood chip paths around the Castle had been transformed into sludgy, half rotten wood pulp. It was raining, too, and while that would not have stopped him in the past, his current delicate condition (as he called it with a curled lip) made him decide to stay inside and box instead.

That is to say, he went to the basement and slammed his fists against the punching bag for a while, but after ten minutes he was so totally exhausted that he had to cling to the bag to keep upright.

Then he tried doing push-ups, and discovered that he couldn't even do five before his arms just gave out.

Sit-ups then. Nope. He reached thirty through pure power of will, followed by an embarrassingly long period in which he was unable to get up because both his arm and his belly muscles were behaving like chipolata pudding in an earth quake.

Disturbing. Lex Luthor did not enjoy feeling like an overturned turtle.

After two more tries (swimming: he almost drowned after three lengths; practicing katas: he really lacked the patience for katas) he gave up and staggered off to the shower. Flus sucked. There was no other word for it. Despondently, he curled up on the couch with a glass of whiskey, and spent half an hour sulking until Mister Wong called to discuss further negotiations.

Around five, Valerie called for his update (he still got it from Reese by mail, too, but liked Valerie's better.) Michael was still alive, Lisa saw like a hawk but appeared to have no negative side abilities, and Jessica had calmed down significantly now it turned out that her premonition hadn't come true.

At least, she was calm until she had another one, stole Valerie's phone again and called him just as he was observing, with clinical detachment, his fork quiver in fingers that used to be rock steady. The chicken on the other end of the fork was doing a queer little dance in the air, and jumped back to his plate when the phone's ring made him jump.

"Valerie? Is something wro—"

"Are you in a forest?" Jessica shrieked. "If you are, get out of it! Now! Your blood'll be on the trees! Your blood will be on the trees!"

The blood that was not on any trees, inside Lex's body, seemed to curdle in his veins. Then he grasped his wits together. "Would you stop doing that!" Lex snapped. "No, I'm not in a forest, and I have no plans to go into one. However, if you keep doing this, I might die of a heart attack. Good grief, Jessica, control yourself, will you?"

Instinctively, he had used the right tone to snap her out of her hysterics. She panted for a few seconds, then, apparently seeing the humor in the situation, started chuckling.

"Sorry. I thought…I…Heh. Sorry."

Lex sighed, laughed as well. "Jessica…I'll bring you a phone tomorrow, ok? If you promise me not to call me again today, at least not like this. Why on earth would I go trudging through any forest in this weather? Have you looked outside yet? It's horrible."

"I know. I…I just…I was worried."

"And I appreciate that. But think logically here, will you? Until I leave for Metropolis tomorrow morning, I won't take a single step outside, let alone into the woods. And there are no forests in Metropolis, unless you count Central Park, and I wasn't planning to go there either. So you can rest assured that this was just a nightmare. I'll be fine, ok?"

"Yeah," she said. "Ok."

"So do you think you can go back to bed, or to whatever it was you're doing and leave me to my poor, cold chicken?"

"Um…Yeah, sure. Sorry. I didn't meant to, uh, let your chicken get cold."

"I'm sure the chicken will forgive you," Lex said sincerely, making her giggle again. He was glad she hadn't started crying. Nevertheless, before he hung up, he asked, "Jessica? Are you alright? Everything's fine, so are you alright too?"

She hesitated, then made a short, positive noise. "Mm! Uh-oh, I think Valerie's coming back. I have to put her phone back. Till tomorrow, Lex!"

The little thief. Smiling, Lex speared another piece of chicken. But his smile faltered when he noticed that this time, his fingers were shaking so badly he was spraying gravy all around.

Why don't they ever see me **skiing**!? 

"Well, Mister Smith. Here we are again."

"Yes." Smith wrapped his hands around his coffee cup. "Here we are."

They were back at the seedy café where they'd met the first time, though were now sitting in another booth. There was a strange bump in the seat of the bench Chloe was sitting on. She wondered what it was. A severed hand, perhaps? Stalled here because what on earth did you do with severed hands when ransom demands had been met? Have them stuffed and placed on the mantle piece?

She wriggled her bottom, but the bump wouldn't go away. It couldn't be a rat, then. Or at least it wasn't a live rat. Ugh. She could move to either side of it, but then she'd force Smith to move as well, and she didn't want to do that. He was watching her with slightly raised eyebrows—_probably wonders if I have piles, or something_. With an inner sigh, she accepted the bump and began to stir her coffee.

"I had a look at your floor plans. They appeared to be genuine." _Unlike your name_.

"They _are_ genuine." The blue eyes stared unblinking into her own. "I have brought the originals with me for you to see. These are the first originals, mind you. The ones they used when they were building those places, not the ones that you can look up at any building institution." He unfolded a bunch of large, thin, light blue papers. "Here. This is the original plan of the Science Center. Note the presence of the third level. And here, this is a copy of the published version. See? Level 3 is not there."

"Where did you _get_ those plans?" Chloe asked. Smith only smiled, pretending he'd understood her question as being rhetorical. It hadn't been. "Mister Smith? Where did you get those plans?"

"Does it matter?"

"It does, if I'm to consider them as evidence."

"Miss Sullivan, before revealing the names of my contacts and the origin of my sources, I'd like to be sure that there actually is a case to be made. After all, I was wrong about the LuthorCare case too, wasn't I?"

_Eeep_…Smith didn't think he'd been wrong. Smith was entirely sure that something was rotten in the state of Luthor, and he was not at all satisfied with her for believing otherwise, evidence be damned. A cold fury directed at her, at anything Luthor, even at his poor coffee chilled the very air in the man's vicinity, Chloe could feel it shivering up her skin like a draft. She repressed a shudder. The man was seriously scary.

"Yes…" she said vaguely. "Yes, I'll investigate. I know about the level 3 in the Smallville plant—Lex Luthor himself owned up to its existence. Apparently he wasn't aware of it; his father had—"

"Lex Luthor is a notorious liar," Smith interrupted her. "Don't you agree, Miss Sullivan?" There was something threatening about the way he said it.

"Mister Smith, I'd appreciate it if you'd stop putting words in my mouth," Chloe snapped back. "Yes, I agree that there are quite a lot of things about the Luthors that don't look at all pretty when exposed to daylight. But I also know that without hard evidence, all your accusations are nothing but gossip. If you want to print empty allegations, I suggest you go and make an appointment with the _Inquisitor_. Whether Lex Luthor lies or whether he doesn't is of no consequence whatsoever until we can catch him doing it, and prove that what he's saying is a lie." There, the heat of her argument had melted some of his icy façade. Something that was almost approval crinkled the corners of his eyes. He wasn't all that old, she realized. Only about thirty. The hate edged into every feature made him look older than he was.

Smith inclined his head. "Very well. I will await your findings, then. When were you planning to start your investigation?"

When? Good god, she hadn't even thought about that yet. "Well," she said, "Next week it's Christmas, so I doubt the Center will be open. If it is, I might go and have a look on Thursday, but…"

"Miss Sullivan!" Smith all but cried. "Don't you see how important this is? Do you have any idea of the horrors conducted at those hidden levels? The experiments, the tests…"

"If you're so sure about these things," Chloe said, resolved not to be cowed by his fanaticism, "what do you need me for?"

Smith fell silent, bitterness twisting his thin lips. Chloe remembered all those emails he'd sent in the past four days, and thought about the number of mails it had to be in total. If all those mails had been attempts to somehow incriminate LuthorCorp, or Lex personally…and if all those mails had been for nothing since LuthorCorp and Lex both were still very much going strong…She could imagine he'd be angry.

"Mister Smith? Have you ever been in any of the level 3 facilities?"

"No," he said tonelessly.

"Then why are you so certain—"

"I know-I _knew_ someone who's been there. The side effects killed him."

Ouch. Yes, that tended to make people vengeful. "Do you know how I can get into the Science Center level 3?"

He shook his head. "I only have the plans. My guess is that there's some sort of hidden passage, somewhere."

"Why haven't you investigated it yourself?"

"They know my face," he said with a snarl of rage. "I can't get in, anymore. Nor can any of my contacts. It has to be you, Miss Sullivan. And soon, before he gets wind of it and closes it down."

She felt the accusation—_like when I gave you the LuthorCare evidence and he somehow found out because you were not fast enough_—and bit her teeth together. Smith was getting on her nerves. But she invoked her poise, and her voice was as cool as his when she replied.

"Very well. I will go to the Science Center and hunt for the hidden level. I will however," and now she looked up and fixed him with her own freezing stare, "do it in my own bloody time, and as I see fit. Is that clear, Mister Smith? The existence of Level 3, or level 33.1, or whatever it is or may not be, is something I've been researching for years, and you may believe me if I tell you I am most interested in pursuing your subject. But I will not be badgered into it. Nor will I draw any overhasty conclusions. I'll need proof. Condemning proof. If I find that there _is_ a level three but they can provide evidence that they've been using it to grow dahlias, they officially aren't breaking any laws and I can do nothing. I want you to understand that, because you don't seem to, and I've seen too many world-changing stories flushed down the toilet because I didn't have enough evidence to back it up. I can't promise you anything. I will do my best, though."

"What more could I ask for?" Smith said sourly. _A more cheerful disposition?_ Chloe thought, and hid a smile.

"Nothing, I guess. Tell me, Mister Smith," she asked innocently. "Apart from collecting rare floor plans, what more have you been up to these past days?"

The LuthorCare building was still half-deserted. Either Lex really had been lucky to recover this quickly from his illness, or most other people distanced themselves from their duties with more ease than he ever could.

_Of course, their work doesn't make them billionaires,_ Lex thought with a touch of complacency. _Or maybe they simply aren't as driven as I am._

He sighed, and put his hands in his pockets. The elevator took him higher and higher. The last time he'd been in here he'd been facing missing children, outraged parents and police inquiries. Now he was facing the future. Literally. _Your blood will be on the trees…what a lovely prospect._

18, 19th floor. He studied himself in the gleaming elevator wall and decided that wearing black had been a mistake. He was too pale; it made him look skinny. He wrapped his coat closer around his body, then let it fall and sneered at himself. _Apart from making me vulnerable, sick, giving me shocking red hair and weird dreams, it seems that Amy has turned me into a narcissist as well._ He resolutely turned away from his sallow reflection.

Ping. 23rd floor. He got out of the elevator and found Valerie Decan waiting for him in the hallway.

"Lex…!" she said, and then halted, staring at him with her mouth open.

Ah, yes, she hadn't seen him with hair yet. He patiently underwent her studious observation, even turning a little pirouette so she could see it from all sides. "There," he said, when he'd had enough of her gawking. "Satisfied?"

To his surprise she flushed, and her wide mouth curled into the broad smile he'd thought so attractive before she got her cold—as attractive as he thought it was now. "Very satisfied. It looks very good on you." The smile changed into a grin. "I don't think I've ever seen anyone with hair this red before."

"I don't think _I_ ever have," Lex said somberly.

She laughed, touched his arm, leading him toward Jessica and the others. "Don't tell me you don't like it! It's lovely! Very exotic." She sighed dramatically. "Why is it that the people who are born with red hair never want it, and everyone else has to get it from a bottle?"

Lex felt uncharacteristically shy under her praise. "So you like it?" he said incredulously. Mary had said she liked it as well, but…well, she was his employee. And Chloe said she'd liked it as well, but…Chloe was Chloe. Now Valerie as well. Or was she just teasing him? No, he didn't think so.

_Huh. Nobody's screaming 'fire truck'. Apparently, when you're an adult, red hair is 'lovely', or' exotic'. Damn. I should have known that when I was six. _

"Lex?" He sucked the pleased grin that threatened back inside. "Do you want to see them all together first, or do you want to see Jessica alone? You can talk to her in my office, if you want."

"I'll say hello first, then talk to Jessica." He said. "Your office sounds good, though. I'll take her with me after greeting the kids."

And so he did. After his last visit, he was slightly surprised to find the children playing as happily as they had the first time he'd come to see them; even if they hadn't forgotten about Amy or those few of them that were now in critical condition in separate rooms, their absence enabled them to ignore the bad things and concentrate on their every-day business.

Ronny was as volubly happy to see Lex as usual, and proudly showed him yet another addition to his train set. Now his passengers could not only die in horrible train accidents, but also commit suicide by jumping off a bridge. Lex wondered if the boy's father had any idea how morbid his little son was.

Jack also greeted him with obvious joy—"Wow, Lex, you look just like Gaaraa!"—at least Lex thought so. He had no idea who Gaaraa was.

He chatted for a while with the other children as well, but he couldn't really concentrate; all he could think of were the clear gray eyes of the girl sitting quietly on her bed at the other end of the room. When he got to her, she got up, and said, "Can I talk to you in private, somewhere? I don't want the others to hear. They might get scared, and...I just don't want them to hear."

Lex nodded. After promising he'd come back again, for a longer period of time the next time, he took his leave of the other children and led Jessica to Valerie's office.

"Take a seat."

She immediately climbed on top of the desk, let her legs dangle. She was wearing slippers with eyes on them. Lex thought they might have looked like bunnies, once. He himself turned around Valerie's chair so he could lean his chest against the back and his chin on his arms.

"So, tell me," he began, when Jessica kept swinging her legs, apparently waiting for him to start questioning her, "what precisely are you seeing?"

"Flashes," she said. "Just…flashes. Of all kinds of things. I mean, I didn't even notice at the beginning. It's mainly when I'm sleeping, like a dream, but sometimes it's when I'm awake. But it's always just a snapshot, a flash." She looked up from the eyes on her feet, and suddenly, like a dam breaking, began to gush forth words, so fast Lex could hardly follow her at times.

"Most of the time it's something very normal, you know, like, like Valerie looking into a book. Or David walking by the window. But then I look up, and he isn't there, but ten minutes later he does come by and waves exactly like I knew he would. In the beginning I thought it was just déjà vu or something; my mom thought that it was, but it isn't, really, it's more. Although it isn't anything like you see in the movies, either. It isn't as if I'm seeing people being beheaded or anything, or murders. And I don't ever see things that happen to people I don't know. Everything I see concerns the people I see here, like the doctors, or Valerie, or my friends and my Mom and Dad…Yesterday, I saw my mom opening the fridge and taking out the meatloaf—they had meatloaf the day before, so it wasn't anything strange. And I saw Tina change her doll's clothes. Little things. Like the cards. Just things the people I know do."

One of her legs gave such a hard kick she almost hit Lex in the chin. He caught her foot, and eased it down, patting it reassuringly. She smoothed her pajama bottoms over her knees, fingers picking at the fabric. "Apart from Michael, and you, and Amy…" her face twisted, "they were just very ordinary, insignificant things."

"What did you see about me, then?"

"You were standing. In a forest. A real forest, not a park. And something…hit you, I think." She swallowed. "You fell, and the bark of the tree behind you was covered in blood. That was all."

_That's all, really. Just you being killed in a forest. No big deal. _Lex made sure his face was totally devoid of emotion. It really wouldn't do to show the girl how spooked he was. "And before that?" he asked gently. "The first time you called me you also saw something."

There was something helpless in the way she looked at him. Her legs began to kick again. "I don't know. It was just a flash. But you looked…really sick. Your head was on a woman's lap—I couldn't see her expression, but she was stroking your face and I think she might've been crying…"

Lex smiled. Ordinary things, not murders. Again he caught her swinging foot and squeezed it. The eyes on her toes were cool against his palm. "She wasn't," he said. "That woman…she's a very good friend of mine. She wasn't crying, she'd just come over to visit. And no, I wasn't feeling very well at the moment, but I definitely wasn't dying. Now, tell me about Amy. What did you see about her?"

Her foot jerked in his hand. He held it fast. "Relax, Jessie. There really is no need to get upset. Besides, I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't kick my teeth out. Just relax. Tell me what you saw."

"It's…Gaaah! I thought it was a dream. It made me wake up. It was…I saw her get into the bathroom stall…no, it was later, she was flushing the toilet. And then there was this…hand—but it was terrible, as if it was…disintegrating. It was only partly visible, only you could see it very well…kind of dripping, but not really. And this hand grabbed her. And then I woke up, but I didn't realize that was what made me wake up, you know? It was like a dream, and I hardly ever remember my dreams. But I remember it now, and I know that was what make me wake up. And then I saw Amy get out of bed and go to the bathroom. That was why I asked if she wanted me to go with her. Why else would I ask that? She's eight, she can go to the toilet by herself." She sneered at herself. "If only I had gone with her. I should have gone with her, maybe then she wouldn't have been taken and maybe then Emmy and Michael and the others wouldn't be so sick right now."

"But Michael didn't die. And I'm fine too. And who knows, now that you've told me about Amy, we can find her back." _A hand. A disintegrating hand. If that really was a flash, and not a nightmare, what could that have been? A meteor freak after all? Or something else?_

She ummed doubtfully, but, like all children, was happy to be relieved of her self-incriminations. Her legs stilled, her fingers stopped picking at her clothes. Lex, no longer afraid she'd kick him, released her foot.

"Do you feel better now? Not scared anymore?"

"No. I mean yes, I'm ok now."

"That's good." He reached into his pocket and brought out a small cell phone. "Now, if you get scared again, you can call me with this. I've programmed my number into it under L."

Her eyes widened, and her mouth formed the hugest grin he'd ever seen on a child's face. "You really did bring me a phone!"

"Well, yes, I promised you I would, didn't I? Here's the adapter." He held it out to her, then pulled it back before she could grab it out of his hand. "This is only for emergencies, though. Like when you get flashes of people…flashes like Michael. I don't want you to call me when you've seen your mom cooking meatloaf."

"Of course not." She stared at the phone with such greed he wondered if it was possible that she never had one. Impossible. Everyone had a phone, surely? When he held it out again she snatched it and cuddled it to her chest like a pet. "Thank you! Thanks a lot! Can I call my mum with this as well?"

Lex shrugged. "You'll have to discuss that with Valerie. Just don't steal her phone anymore when you want to call me. And for heaven's sake don't start screaming about my blood on trees. It's quite unsettling."

She grinned. "I hope your chicken hadn't grown too cold, yesterday."

"Actually, I prefer my chicken to be cold." Actually, he'd left the chicken to be fed to the dumpster; he'd been that upset. Jessica didn't need to know that. She laughed.

"You're so funny." Her eyes got a naughty twinkle. "You're going to have lunch with Valerie, right? I think she really likes you."

Lex felt slightly taken aback. "Exactly what do you see in those flashes?"

"Wellll," she said, stroking her new phone with an unconscious sexual gesture that was wholly obvious to Lex, "They're not always R-rated…"

TBC


	12. Chapter 12

A look inside Lex's head. What, you thought the inside would be as pretty as the outside? For those die-hard Chlex fans wailing 'But that's not Chloe!!' er, yes. I did that on purpose. Imagine her reaction if that'd happened with HER. Lex'd have DIED of apoplexy.

So if you like your Lex cool, sexy and overwhelming, skip that part, because he's going to go pretty far down evil grin tm 

Ok, curious yet? I hope so! Please drop me a note if you liked it. Or if you didn't.

Twelve: In which Lex reminisces on the art of seduction and considers ritual suicide 

Lex helped Valerie into her coat. It was made of fluffy white fake fur, and made her look a little like a very classy polar bear. For one moment he thought she had grown a few inches, then he noticed that she had taken off the plain white shoes she wore when she was with the children, and had now donned high-heeled shoes. He tried to ignore the throng of grinning children on the other side of the glass but it was kind of hard, especially since half of them were sticking up their thumbs or pressing their noses against the window.

"Do they do this every time you go out for lunch?" Lex asked, amused by the number of flattened noses.

Valerie chuckled. "Not really." She looked back at him, her loose hair half-obscuring her face. "It must be because of you."

Lex smiled, offered no comment. He smoothed the coat over her shoulders, barely touching her neck with his index finger as he adjusted her collar. It was such an ingrained gesture he could do it on auto-pilot.

Seduction.

The secret of it lay in the small things, not the removal of one's clothes or playing around with olives or ice cream. It was in that little almost-touch, little more than the perceived warmth of another's skin, in something as innocent as assisting a woman with her coat. It was in the short press of his hand in the small of her back as he let her go first out of the door. It was in the touch of his shoulder against hers as they stood in the elevator, just the slightest rustle of cloth brushing cloth.

But it was also in the way Valerie shook her hair so that she had to peer through it when he spoke, and in her manner of smiling: her lips pressed together, keeping her mouth smaller than if she'd grinned all-out, as she had done before. There was mystery in a close-lipped smile. It formed dimples in her cheeks, and Lex was quite aware that she knew that it did. She knew how to play this game as well as he did, and she had immediately accepted his opening bid, which pleased him to no end.

If seduction was familiar ground for her, he could dive into the game and play it for all he was worth without having to be afraid he'd hurt her, unlike the way it was with certain other women.

A frown creased his brow. No. He didn't want to think of Chloe now, he was still a little out of sorts with her. She was a lovely girl, really, but she should really curb that curiosity of hers. And that Smith type…Tippitt still hadn't found out anything about the man. He really should put another man on Mowett's death; he was getting nowhere with Tippitt.

"Pressing business?" Valerie interrupted his train of thought, making it crash and causing him to abandon it. He left it gladly and turned to her with a smile.

"No, not really. I cancelled anything pressing this week."

"Ah, yes. You were ill." He gave a soft snort, and she smiled. "So, how was it being sick for the first time in…twenty years?"

"The experience less than thrilled me."

"But you are completely recovered now?"

"Apparently." He still had a cough. It wasn't all that bad, and he could repress it most of the time, but it was still there, occasionally, tickling his lungs like strands of cobweb. "Did you have a particular place in mind? For lunch?"

Valerie's eyes crinkled. She had the beginnings of crow's feet at her eyes; wrinkles caused by humor, pressed into her flesh by age. Lex knew her file (he'd checked it just after he first met her) by heart, and therefore knew that she was 35 years old, a Libra, had studied psychology at Harvard, had worked with Aids orphans in Africa and had returned to Metropolis after her sister (the eldest of two) had been gravely injured in a car accident. The sister was still alive, but restricted to a wheel chair.

He knew she'd been married once, and was divorced. She had worked for LuthorCorp since its founding day about a year ago, and had called in sick only twice: once when she twisted her knee during squash (one day), and once when her employer sent her home to recover from a cold about a week ago (three days, including the weekend). He knew nothing of her but that the children loved her, and the fact that there was not a hint of malice in her eyes when she looked at him.

She, on the other hand, knew almost everything there was to know about him—if she read the papers and the glossies, of course. According to the glossies, Lex had twenty-four favorite restaurants. He wondered which one Valerie would pick, _if_ she would pick one.

"Oh, I don't know…I usually have lunch in the cafeteria. But there's this little restaurant on the fourth floor of the Bastion…Do you know it? It's lovely, very spaciously furnished, just perfect when discussing patients—not that you'd discuss patients, of course."

"I know the place," Lex nodded. He was very happy that it had never appeared in any glossy. "And true, I wouldn't discuss patients while eating there. I'd discuss my fellow business partners and trade information with their rivals." He smiled brightly. "Apparently they have good salads."

Lex, naturally, had never had a salad for lunch in his entire life, at least not if it wasn't liberally supplemented with large amounts of bread or potatoes, meat, fish or other side courses. Lettuce, he'd always reasoned, was for women and people that were so afraid to gain weight that they'd rather dine like rabbits than eat proper food.

"You eat meal salads?" Valerie asked incredulously. She really was a smart woman.

"Good god no. I'd faint halfway during the day."

"Need your proteins, eh?"

Her mouth quirked, and suddenly he was very glad she hadn't said that she was the one needing the proteins. _Christ, she's even worse than me. _"Absolutely," he drawled, making sure to look everywhere but at her face. "I've got to keep my strength up."

"Well, in that case…I think they have club sandwiches too."

"They do. Although they put anchovies on top of them, which is a minor negative point, in my opinion."

"You don't like anchovies?"

"Let me put it this way: if I were a cannibal…" She laughed out loud. "No, wait. If I were a cannibal, what would I choose: Tut-Ankh-Amon's mummy or some nubile young virgin?"

"The virgin, I presume," Valerie chuckled.

"Exactly! Why should I eat mummified fish that's full of small hairy bones if there's perfectly fine fresh fish without bones to be had?"

"Mmm," Valerie mused. "You have a point."

Lex only just refrained from saying that he was full of points. By now they had strolled over to the Bastion Hotel, entered the hallway and faced another elevator. Lex saw them reflected in the mirror on the back wall when it opened, and he grinned at the almost identical smirks they were wearing. They really had to stop looking like this, or people'd assume they'd already had sex and were only coming up for food.

The staff of the little Restaurant, which was called GreenGarden, apparently in reference to the near jungle of plants in the room, was discreet, efficient and quick. Within two minutes Lex and Valerie were seated in the shadow of a palm and a giant fern, had received a carafe of water and the menu, and would have ordered (both already knowing said menu) if an elderly man at another table hadn't spilled coffee all over his pants.

As their waiter ran off to fetch a towel, Lex winced in sadistic sympathy, and Valerie drew figures in the condensation on her glass.

"Oh, by the way," she said, looking up from the glass, "did you just give Jessica a mobile phone?"

"Hm? Oh, yes. To keep her from stealing yours, and to keep me from having a stroke when she unexpectedly calls me to inform me of my imminent demise."

"Your _demise_? She didn't tell me anything about that?"

"Well, the chance of it coming to pass is extremely slim," Lex said airily. "So I managed to convince her. But I must say she" _scared the living shit out of me_ "somewhat surprised me when she called me the other day."

"I thought it was Michael she was afraid for." _Oops_. Lex feigned lamb-like innocence, but damn her education, she was having none of it. "Wait a minute…she called you again? With my phone? Yesterday?"

"Look, we can order!"

Lex ordered a chicken sandwich (he really did prefer his chicken cold) and Valerie, shaking her head but smiling, went for steak and fries.

"What?" she asked when Lex gaped at her. "Can't I eat a proper meal because I subsequently don't fit your stereotypical view of a delicate, salad-munching woman?"

"It's your cholesterol," Lex said, shrugging. "What about me giving Jessica a cell phone? You don't approve?"

"Oh, I approve. Especially if she's been borrowing mine without my knowledge…No, it's more that the other children might be jealous." She grinned. "You may need to invest in more presents, Lex. I'm sure Ronny'd like more accessories for his train, and Jack is always looking for new anime series…"

Lex sniffed. "As far as I know I'm responsible for those horrible musical hats they're so fond of, and that outrageously cheerful tree as well. I owe them nothing! Tell you what, the moment they come up with an interesting ability—like having flashes that foretell my, or anyone's, really, death, or…self-combustion, or anything else exciting, I'll buy them cell phones too."

"I was more thinking along the lines of toys, or something," Valerie suggested.

Lex waged a battle against his inner Freud. He tried thinking of toy shops with stacks of baby dolls and My Little Ponies—but the last time he'd looked into one of these shops he'd thought that all the baby dolls looked like inflatable sex dolls, with their open, waiting mouths and half-closed eyes, so after a short skirmish he let Freud win. Ronny's train track was nothing compared to the linear track of Lex's mind, which was, at the moment, one-way, rode over curves and through bushes, and seemed to have taken up permanent residence in a warm, damp gutter.

He shook his head to clear it and studied his empty plate to keep from laughing out loud.

"Sure," he said, his voice quavering a little. "I'll let my PR manager know. She loves going shopping for kids." He took a swallow of water. B_aby dolls. Get a grip, Lex._

Thankfully, lunch arrived shortly, and try as it might, even his mind could find nothing phallic or otherwise sex-related in his chicken sandwich. Valerie attacked her steak with vigor. It was a pity she was no longer wearing her fluffy coat, or the polar bear diving into a seal image would be complete, Lex thought, amused.

The women he usually associated with never ate. They picked at toast and caviar, nibbled on slices of cucumber, suggestively suckled sugared cherries, and licked the cream off strawberries, but they hardly ever swallowed even the tiniest morsel. If they did, their carefully planned out 200 calories diet would fail, or worse, they might be caught with a mouthful of fish eggs by the very prince charming they had set out to hunt, bring down and devour. Metropolis upper class ladies probably ate at home before coming to a party. Or maybe they had little plastic bags attached to their thighs and were fed intravenously.

Seeing a woman really tuck in always made Lex smile. Chloe had a way of stuffing chocolate muffins into her mouth that—no, he wasn't with Chloe now, so she could stay well out of his mind for the time being. Reporter out, doctor in.

He paused in the middle of chewing a cherry tomato. A doctor. Good god, she was a doctor.

And a brunette.

With a very wide mouth.

Dear god. He was doing it again.

"Lex?" the brunette with the wide mouth asked. "Are you alright?" And immediately the panic disappeared. Valerie was nothing like Helen. What was more, he wasn't in love with her.

Was he?

The answer came instantaneously: No, he wasn't.

He exhaled slowly, swallowed his tomato and smiled. She answered the smile, and again their expressions conveyed something perfectly similar: a mutual liking, a mutual respect and attraction, a man and a woman having lunch that would probably lead to casual sex without any emotional backlash. Just the way he liked it.

"I'm fine. I was just wondering. I happened to read your file—I read all my employees' files—and I couldn't help noticing that you'd been to Africa. Why Africa?"

Out came a story of Africa, land of golden valleys and red, cracked clay deserts; of cities where children crawled in the filth and where apartheid was being reversed until no Caucasians dared to enter certain places of it, but also: where brilliant young students became scholars that kept the hope of a better world alive. She spoke of a split nation where people had wiped each other out for having an identity that was imposed on them by outsiders, outsiders that left them to the madness of war until it consumed them.

She described blooming towns where no one had a future but where the women sang while they worked the land; and painted a picture of wide, preserved stretches of land that housed elephants, zebra, antelopes and thousands of other species. Her voice soft, she told him of entire villages wiped out by aids, hepatitis, leprosy, other diseases. She had worked at a small local hospital slash orphanage, distributing medicine and advice, lending an ear to those who needed to speak, playing with children that had lost everything: their parents, their homes, their health, and would probably soon lose their lives as well.

"But they played, Lex," she said, and there was a strange kind of pride in her face. "They played and they laughed. It was amazing. You might think that taking care of dying children is something horrible, draining, self-destructive. For some, it is. There is always loss, no chance of winning. I've seen doctors buckle under the strain, but for me…" She shook her head. "It was cathartic. Those kids in Africa have a very rare, very precious ability, something we've lost here, in the West. The capacity to live for the day, to not think ahead and to fear the future."

"Some kind of animal instinct, you mean?" Lex asked, mesmerized by the dream-like cadence of her voice.

She shook her head. "No. No, this is something different. Animals forage, and prepare for the winter, and they are affected by nature and other things. No, what these children displayed was a very humanoid, I'd even say artificial way of thinking. Of forcing yourself to be happy, no matter what. But it wasn't a sham, it was real! They really were happy. They lived, and they had food, and friends, so they were happy. And when they became too ill to play there was a clean bed, medicines to take away their pain, and stories to keep them occupied…until they died. And they were happy until the moment they closed their eyes for the last time. I've never seen as many smiles as when I was living there, in a miniature village of the living dead. And that was…singularly liberating."

She smiled, picked up a French fry and dipped it into a puddle of ketchup. "I don't expect you to understand."

Lex took a deep breath, feeling strangely light-headed. "I think I do," he said quietly. He hadn't meant their conversation to become so serious, but was, for the moment, unable and unwilling to drop it. "There is no artifice in that kind of happiness. And children…children don't lie about things they haven't been taught to lie about."

Valerie studied him over her fry. She nodded. "Yes, there's that," she said. "But more than that it's always galled me that death, and especially a child's death, a child's _dying_ is always made so dramatic—towards the child itself, I mean. Of course it's horrible. But what good does it do a child to be constantly reminded that it's going to die, and die young?

'The reason I came to work for LuthorCare was that I couldn't forget the smiles of the children in Africa as they died—and the smiles of their friends when they were left behind. Children especially have that strength: to move on, to forget and be happy if you only let them. That's why we bought them those hats, and encouraged them to play with one another. Children shouldn't be languishing in bed until they can't leave it anymore…

'Though I'm very glad to say," she continued in a much lighter tone, "that most of _these_ children are doing extremely well and will probably be pronounced cured in the near future. Thanks to your blood, which isn't something many people can say."

"Indeed," Lex said thoughtfully. He stole a fry from Valerie's plate and used it to mop up a bit of sauce from his own plate. Lex Luthor, both silver piece-toting Judas and personal Jesus to cancerous children. Valerie Decan, angel of death. _A pretty pair the two of us are making,_ he thought wryly. All of a sudden disgusted with the topic, he pushed it away, just as he physically pushed his plate away.

"Shall we have coffee?"

"Yes please," said Valerie.

Over coffee, they managed to re-establish the easy mood they'd started out in. Valerie traded the hazelnut cookie she got with her latte for the ginger snap Lex received with his straight black. She told him she couldn't drink any coffee with less milk than a latte because caffeine drove her up the wall. Lex asked her if that was a bad thing.

She asked him about his project in China, and Lex told her some amusing stories about trying to start a factory over the phone in a language that had 35 different pronunciations and meanings for the syllable 'ah'.

Neither of them mentioned the children again. The subject of the children was passé. Lex had more coffee, Valerie drank tea, and at one point she stood up and said she was going to powder her nose.

"You didn't strike me as the type who wears powder," Lex said, and immediately he thought, _Why the hell did I say that_?

Thankfully, Valerie didn't notice him flustering. "Well," she said airily, "I could also say I was going to the bathroom, but whenever I do people take offence and tell me to pretend I'm applying powder. I'll be back in a drop. You'll watch my purse?"

He promised that he would guard it with his life, and she removed herself, walking perfectly balanced on those high-heeled shoes that looked like torture devices. He watched her go with a contented smile on his face.

It was nice to go out with a woman he liked again. For too long, he'd been dating—well, if you could call quick fucks like that dating—women he'd carefully selected to be not even remotely interesting to him. Air-headed girls who wanted nothing more than to boast they'd had a piece of Lex Luthor, women who hoped to gain favors by letting him get in their pants; meaningless hardbodies that were oh so enjoyable for a few hours of mindless pleasure, but that never penetrated, if one could forgive him the figure of speech, even the softest layer of his psychological walls.

He hadn't even known he had such walls until after Helen. Desiree…well, he didn't think he ever loved her. Lusted after her, yes, and they'd had some spectacular sex, but apart from that, he hardly even remembered her. But Helen…He thought his life had been less than ideal before she'd betrayed him in such a fundamental way, but after the island…God, he thought he'd never lose that sick feeling of grief and rage that almost seemed to consume him, especially when he lay awake at night. Although, he reasoned later, that might just have been his stomach readjusting to bread, meat and vegetables after three months of grubs, lobster and coconut.

Whatever it was, though the sickness passed, his skittishness when it came to women didn't. He didn't want to fall in love again. It didn't work for him. Either his loved ones set him on fire or they dropped him on uninhabited islands. 'Happiness depends on ourselves', Aristotle claimed, and after two marriages, Lex tended to agree.

Of course, as it turned out that summer was actually the best part of that year. It went rapidly downhill after he returned from his vacation of sun, sea and beach: first the madhouse, where he actually thought he really might lose his mind at one point, then Daddy's shock therapy session (one of the less enjoyable memories he'd regained after his memory treatment—hell, who was he kidding, he really hadn't been happy with any recollection, which showed why the mind repressed those things), then the FBI's little game of Show and Tell (which, even though his father was an evil parricidal son of a bitch, had cost Lex more than he'd liked. Betrayal still didn't come naturally to him. But he was learning, he was young, after all), and finally, to top it off, his fifth, or was it sixth? near-death experience since he'd moved to Smallville.

After that year, Lex decided that life was too short to care about broken hearts, and if he didn't want to end up frustrated out of his skin, he was going to have to work on it. So he chose those pretty, empty-eyed faces with care, chatted them up, screwed them, left them before dawn. Most of them expected no less, and those who did, well, at least they hadn't been dumped in the middle of nowhere by someone they trusted. If they had trusted him, they were idiots.

Several of those girls apparently waited only until he'd closed the door to the hotel room or apartment they'd been in before running to the press and screaming that they wanted to have a splash page in some glossy to divulge all about their one night stand with Lex Luthor. (He had actually walked in on one of those girls once, when he'd returned because he'd forgotten his tie because he'd used it to tie her to the bed the evening before. She was on the phone with someone, saying, "…but I even took _pictures_ with my phone, I have a photo of him _sleeping_ next to me, and I…" when he opened the door, and stared at him with wide, rabbit-in-headlight eyes. While he calmly unwound his tie from the bed post, he said, "If you want pictures, you can make an appointment with my PR manager," and then left, trying very hard not to burst out laughing.)

Lex didn't mind that kind of publicity much. No matter what they called him in the _Glossy, MetTop, People, Private, Weekend_ or whatever low-life gossip magazine, he'd never been judged anything but 'spectacular' on his sexual skills. And that was good, because that was what kept the herd growing, so he could pick out the ones he wanted, chat them up, screw them, and leave them before dawn.

Unlike several other playboys, Lex had learned early that women really didn't mind a man using women like whores as long as they made slutty behavior worthwhile for those women. Being selfish in bed—worse, being reported to be selfish in bed—could do one's reputation more harm than accidentally poisoning half a village. Therefore, Lex had made a mental list of What To Do While Seducing Women, and he stuck to it no matter what.

Before doing _anything_, make sure condoms were available. The public secretly loved a womanizer, but their love turned to hate when the womanizer produced a baby and then refused to deal with the consequences. Since having an unplanned bastard heir would royally screw up Lex's plans for the future, he bought Durex in quantities and put them in any place he could think of: wallets, pockets, in secret compartments in his shoes and ties; in drawers, under tables, up to the lamp shades in his penthouse. He hated condoms as much as any man, but until he was ready for raising his own Luthor Junior, he wasn't going to operate without them.

No matter how stupid, boring, pathetic or annoying the woman turned out to be, never, ever mistreat her. Even if she deserves it, it isn't worth the possible bad publicity. (As his Helen-caused misogyny gradually lessened, he changed this to: no woman deserves to be abused. He _liked_ women; he'd never hurt them. At least not physically.)

Do not take one night stands into your own house. It's much easier to leave them than to have to kick them out.

Make women come. Preferably several times in a row. It really wasn't all that hard, and it made for much more enjoyable sex. And for ego-boosting articles in glossies that made him snicker when Mary, casually, placed them in a file on his desk.

During sex, don't moan, grunt or pant overly loud, lose control or scream previous lovers' names. Practice this. (He had added this one after reading an article in Private, which discussed what was worse: a totally silent lover, or one who should be gagged. He'd giggled helplessly at a part where a woman described her sexual experience with someone he knew as 'He was like a bloody priest having a rapture! Oh God, Oh Jesus, Oh God—Next day the neighbors came over asking if I could either move to a church or have better floor isolation installed.')

Don't fall asleep in their arms. If you do drop off, don't stay until they wake up; leave immediately. (Somehow, he'd discovered, those psychological walls he so prided himself on were very easily breached when he woke up with someone after sleeping together for several hours. There was something about sleepy smiles and bed hair actually caused by sleeping, not careful styling, that slipped past his defenses and made him _care_, and he didn't want to care).

Don't send them earrings, as they then develop pyro-homicidal tendencies. (Although maybe that was just him. Maybe he had some sort of 'please set me on fire' aura some women were sensitive to).

There was an addendum too; in fact there were several addendums. One was: Don't flirt with men unless you're prepared to sleep with them. Once, in his days of sex and drugs and Rock'n'Roll he hadn't been paying attention to who he was actually seducing (or maybe it'd been him that had been seduced) and ended up in the arms of a very loving, tender, yet undeniably masculine man. The experience hadn't been all that unpleasant, but homosexuality was, to Lex, pretty much like taking a sip of what you were expecting to be honey-flavored, fragrant tea and instead getting a mouthful of excellent cream of tomato soup. The end result was quite good, but that first sip was rather unsettling.

At least he hadn't been a virgin—that way—when he was fed that particular cream of tomato. It may be a bit of a triteness, but single gender boarding schools like Excelsior really did occasionally display scenes that would have made the people of Sodom and Gomorrah blush. What did people expect, putting a group of teenage boys together without any girls to alleviate their budding, raging, exploding hormonal urges? All Lex could say was that he was very grateful for the lessons of his Ex-Marine so that when the time came that he'd finally gathered the courage to have someone 'do' him, he was at least able to pick someone (or be picked by someone, as that was his _modus operandi_ at the time) he more or less trusted and liked.

Still, that first time really hadn't been something to write home about—not that he'd ever write about something like that ("Dear Dad. Got boned up the ass today. How are you?"). It had been awkward, sticky, demeaning and unrewarding, and it had hurt. The other way around was better, but Lex decided at a young age that he definitely preferred tea over tomato soup, and stuck to that decision. Most of the time.

And then there were the women that somehow fell outside the rules of his list; those he genuinely cared about. Like Lana, because beneath that little princess exterior she was just as self-centered and twisted as he was but people still liked her, and that intrigued him.

And like Chloe, because she reminded him of those color-changing sweets he used to have when he was small. Chloe surprised him every time he thought he had her covered. Like that time they met at the conference, when he'd been running high on existentialism and untainted blood. He hadn't seen her in a few months, and her showing up just when he was ready to give up pretense and start playing chess with himself out of pure boredom had been had been like a small blessing. Hearing her say his name, turning around and seeing her there, squeezed in between the stand and a pillar as if she were still fifteen instead of a distinguished reporter in distinguished reporter clothes, with that impish grin on her face, had shot down his walls like a canon.

He must have desperately needed someone to talk to, someone to listen to him, because she most certainly wasn't the kind of woman he'd usually have wanted to chat up, screw and leave before dawn—she wasn't an air-head, for starters, and she'd been the first genuinely friendly face he'd seen in a few days—so before he knew it he had invited her and her ink stains into his car. Where he proceeded to tell her more about himself than he had anyone else, simply because she kept asking, and asking, because she was horrified that he could dispassionately observe his situation and take pleasure in the fact that he'd cheated death again. She hadn't understood, of course; no one could possibly understand, but she'd been there and she'd listened and she'd made him laugh when he might have cried otherwise.

Then, when she didn't run away when he gave her the chance, he invited her into his house—which was something else he didn't usually do. It went against his self-imposed rules. Nevertheless, he did ask her to stay, although he also kept giving her little hints that, unless she made it perfectly clear that she wasn't interested, he was going to chat her up, screw her and kick her out before dawn…and she just _didn't. get. it._

That had been a first. She just refused to acknowledge that he was working his playboy routine on her. This confused him. He wasn't exactly subtle. But she steadfastly ignored any sexual innuendo and instead of frustrating him…it made him feel more relaxed and happy than in a long, long time.

And just as he was beginning to look forward to simply spending the evening cooking, eating and talking with her, she'd proceeded to breach the ruins of his walls with that quick-witted blue tongue of hers, and before he knew it he'd been licking sauce off her face. Which he definitely hadn't planned. He'd been planning, or so he told himself, to get into her pants, do her hard and fast, be nice to her so he could occasionally check in on her and see if she was actually worth more than a one-night stand. And then, deciding that she was really too sweet to treat her that way he'd changed his plans to not do her at all…and she completely undid him with an eyeful of spaghetti sauce and a mouthful of ink.

And then…he could still laugh when he thought about it. She'd changed colors. Like a magic ball. One moment: innocent Smallville Chloe, awkward girl with a million dollar smile. Next moment, sexy Metropolis minx. The things she could do with her tongue were just _evil_. Nice in bed, a bit passive, but damn, she could kiss.

And afterwards. No recriminations. No 'you played with my feelings' emo crap. She'd wanted this just as much as him, and what he'd had perceived as passivity had been the perfect reaction to make him lose his footing, forcing him think about it and fail his routine. And it had occurred to him that maybe she'd been changing colors since the moment he'd met her in the great hall as she was hunting for wine. She'd known perfectly well what he'd been up to. Consciously or subconsciously.

Over the months he'd decided that it was subconsciously. She could be pretty devious, but she simply wasn't experienced enough to play such mental games. She excelled at them, though. No wonder even his father had begun to fear her.

Lex smiled fondly.

He'd fallen a little in love with her, that evening, even as he firmly told her that he hadn't. His father was right in one aspect: Lex let himself be ruled by his emotions. He had no interests, he had passions. He had no hobbies, he had obsessions. He didn't cultivate friendships with women, he fell hopelessly in love with them—unless he chose them to mentally, if not physically, repulse him.

If Chloe, who was anything but repulsive, had decided to stay that night, he might very well have really fallen for her, and that would have been a disaster, both for her and for him.

He was convinced Helen had been a good, honest woman before she met him. Just as his mother had been an optimistic, loving woman before Lionel drove her to murder her own son. Power corrupts; Luthor power corrupts absolutely. He couldn't bear the thought of corrupting Chloe.

"So tell me, Holmes, dear fellow," Lex murmured to himself. "Is that love or is that selfishness?" "Why, Watson, my esteemed colleague, it's a whole load of crock if you ask me, old pal." Lex snorted. It was a good thing he was having lunch with a councilor, because really, there was something not quite right in his head.

Where did this leave Valerie anyway? He liked her, and he wouldn't mind fucking her, and that feeling was obviously mutual. She wasn't pretty enough to be a hardbody, and she was too smart to not see what he was up to. So, why was she going along with it? She wasn't leading him on, he'd have caught that, and he really couldn't see any reason why she'd want to tumble into bed with him for other reasons than…Did she like him as well, in a similar way to Chloe? As a friend?

Lex experienced an unexpected and livid bout of nerves. What was he to do with this woman? Take a chance with her at all? Pay for the lunch and turn tail? Damn it, he'd just gotten used to being occasional sex-friends with Chloe. The last thing he wanted to do was fall in love with another doctor.

"Lex?" The moment of truth was fast approaching. "I'm ready." She was. She may not be wearing powder, but she'd redone her mascara and smoothed her hair and done all those myriad little things that women did in bathrooms to make themselves prettier. He did think she was very lovely. The smile she gave him was wide and warm and sincere. "Were you daydreaming? You seemed very far away."

_Just wading through the mire of the mutant rat-infested hell-hole that is my subconscious, darling. _He smiled back at her. "I'm sorry. I was just thinking."

"I see," She licked a glossy lip. "About what?"

"Sex," said Lex, deadpan. A tiny little trumpet sounded the attack in the back of his head.

"Oh," said Valerie. She grinned. "You don't believe in subtlety, do you?"

"Would you prefer it if I were more subtle?"

She said nothing, just sat staring at him with that ear to ear grin (ineffectively hidden behind her hand) while a waiter came by with the check. Lex paid. He smirked. "I can be subtle. Or I could just drop you off at the hospital again?"

"I'm off for the rest of the day," Valerie said. Lex briefly wondered if he should start wearing mascara as well, because that slow lift of the eyelids was a hell of a lot more impressive with long, heavy lashes. "And I live just around the corner."

"And you accused _me_ of lacking subtlety?"

She shrugged. "I work with children. Delicacy is wasted on them. Not that I'd confuse you with one of the children, of course…"

"Naturally." He helped her into her coat, again barely touching her neck as he did so.

She did live very close to the Bastion, in a modest, richly decorated apartment on the ground floor, with a small garden in the back. Here and there African influences peeked through the very American furnishing: some dark wood carving of a woman with rings around her neck, a tapestry painted in vivid colors on the wall, a board in the hall that was covered in drawings and cards from the various children when she'd left for Metropolis. Lex studied a few of those while Valerie hung up her coat. Those drawings that had writing on them were in perfect English. Valerie's finger tapped the card he'd been studying, a finger with a small scar on the knuckle, short, square nails, no polish.

"I got this one a week ago, from a girl called Mawi. She was at the orphanage with her baby brother. Apparently she's married now, and expecting her first child." She paused. "She should be about sixteen by now."

"And her brother?"

"She doesn't say." She looked up at him, doing that thing with her lashes again, and he leaned forward and kissed her. She kissed him back, unhurried, her kiss much like her smile: warm, slow, encouraging. He'd been hard ever since coffee but at the moment he thought he might spend the entire afternoon just rubbing up against this woman, simply kissing her and basking in her warmth.

Until she put her hands on his groin, then things kind of heated up. She started by kicking off her shoes, which he mimicked to her great hilarity. Then he got rid of her V-neck and blouse, and she ripped off (quite literally: she popped one of the buttons) his shirt and tossed it over the statue of the black woman with the neck rings.

"This way," she said, somewhat breathlessly, and tugged at his tie. He removed it immediately and carelessly flung it over his shoulder. Her bedroom was light and spacious, empty but for a king size bed with yellow covers, a vanity table with a chair and a huge, light oaken cabinet. The closed curtains had a yellow pattern as well; they transformed the cold winter light seeping through them into golden rays of summer sun

Her bra looked very interesting flung over the mirror of the vanity table. The rest of their clothes followed suit, although not over the mirror because that would probably seriously damage it.

Lex worked effortlessly through his list (when applicable) until he had her writhing under him on the bed while she dug fingers into his back (making him very grateful for those short nails), and he was just getting ready for the conquering thrust when

_Fizzle_.

_What the fuck? _Lex blinked. _Hello? Body? What are you doing?_ The manual was quite clear on this. Insert rod _a_ into slot _b_ and pump until results were made—only there was no rod _a_. Only limp dangly bit _a_.

_I don't believe this. I just…don't._

He saw his own face, stark with horror, reflected in Valerie's beautiful eyes, and pulled back.

I'm sorry," he said as passively as he could. "I have to go and commit ritual suicide now."

"W-what?!" Valerie made a grab for him. His blood decided to give up on his lower anatomy entirely and flooded to his head. Lex never blushed. He had followed classes on how to repress blushes. And embarrassment, well, being a totally bald child made short work of that, too. Now, however, he blushed. Within two seconds his face felt as if it had swollen—unlike other parts, which were now trying to crawl back into his body—to three times its usual size. He was so mortified he thought he really could die of it. Maybe, if he was lucky, he could bleed out through his ears and nose. His eyes were prickling. "What's wrong, what's…"

"Nothing!" _I'm broken! I don't function. Your autopilot has crashed._ "It's all right, it isn't you, it's just me. Perhaps I didn't sacrifice my goat to the right godhood this year." In a total panic he tried to worm himself out of her arms, but the woman had a grip like an octopus and refused to let him go and get his Hakashi samurai sword to rip open his guts and let the shame flow free.

He could deal with flu, and weakness, and hangovers, and stupid, red hair but this, no, he couldn't deal with this. His father's voice, scathing and full of ridicule, echoed round in his head: _Well, Son, I must say you really disappointed me this time. Luthors are not impotent. Reading this in the Sunday morning issue of the Planet really spoiled my breakfast_.

Lex made an inarticulate sound of anguish.

"Lex," said Valerie. He could hardly hear her through the roaring in his ears.

_Holy fuck_, he thought, _I think I'm going into shock_.

"Lex! Calm down. It's ok, just relax."

"Ok?" he rasped. "_OK_? This hasn't ever happened before! Never!"

"Well, _that's_ obvious," she said, futilely trying to keep from laughing.

Vile sorcerous ho! What foul magic hast thou practiced upon my manhood! the biblically-influenced part of Lex's brain roared—thankfully, he could silence it before it could actually make him voice those words aloud. Besides, it wasn't her fault. No, everybody knew whose fault it was, and cancer be damned, child be damned, the moment he found Amy he was going to import a pack of wolves, real ones, those mean ones from Russia, not those tail-wagging puppies from the States, for the sole purpose of being able to FUCKING FEED HER TO THEM!! 

"Lex!" Valerie was physically shaking him out of his murderous plans. "Christ, would you stop doing that! You're scaring me. Here, lie down. This could happen to everyone, really, it's no big deal, just relax and we can try…"

"It's not supposed to happen to me!" Lex snarled. "I'm 28 fucking years old, I should be able to impregnate twelve women in one night…" He trailed off as she started to giggle. Withering under his glare, she still chuckled helplessly.

"I'm sorry," she said, biting her lip. "I'm really sorry, but…You are SO adorable."

"I," Lex grated furiously, "am not adorable." Not being able to get it up was NOT adorable. Just like fireworks that didn't go off weren't adorable. Or rockets that crashed back down to earth. They were highly dangerous, combustible, untrustworthy objects. He'd never felt less adorable in his entire life. This was NORMAL? Men of his age that couldn't…normal? Holy Mary Mother of God…

"Yes," she said imperturbably, "You are. Now don't glower at me like that. And stop squeezing me. Lie back. Think of…"

"If you're going to say I should think of hopping bunnies I will not be responsible for…"

And then her mouth closed over limp dangly bit _a_, and he thought of nothing at all. Christ. He must have had over 1200 blow jobs, but never one that did…that…like…_that_…

Valerie came up for air. "See?" she said with a slightly superior air he chose to ignore for the moment. She gave him a little pat. "All ready to go."

Lex was still blinking. "Where did you…" he began, then decided he really didn't care as long as lever _a_ was in full function again.

She answered him just the same. "Africa. What, did you think I stayed there for so long purely for those children? I'm not that philanthropic. My husband was black. A black doctor." She grinned. "Please help me forget about him? You were doing such a good job of it before you…"

Lex didn't as much kiss her as simply cover her mouth with his own to keep her from finishing that sentence.

Even though Valerie had made ritual suicide unnecessary, Lex had still fled when he had the chance. She hadn't seemed to mind that, much. She probably understood—had him all figured out, and was now reducing him to a file for her library of other cracked souls. That was ok. He was too badly humiliated (though he'd more than made up for his temporary…flagging…) to face her anytime soon.

As he was sitting in his penthouse, the trusty bottle of Lagavulin at hand's reach, it had occurred to Lex that this was the first time he'd had sex after Amy screwed him up. He'd been changed, that was blatantly obvious, but how much? Taking another sip, he considered. Up to now, he'd always considered this _state_ of his a temporary thing—but what if it wasn't? What if she never returned? What if he were stuck in this failing excuse for a body for the rest of his life? He needed to know what he was capable of.

Lex put down the glass, pondering his options. He could get a call girl. He didn't want to get a call girl. He didn't want to see another naked woman until he knew how badly he'd been affected.

_Ah well. There are odes about hands, after all._ Stealing a final swallow of whiskey, he made for his bedroom.

"Drat," Lex gasped, and threw the tissue after the others into the dustbin in the corner. Option five: stop right before _moment supreme_, pause and recommence—disabled. Just like option two: stay hard for half hour without any stimulation. Also disabled. Lex leaned forward in his lotus position and rested his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands, a brooding Buddha in the heart of a flower made of porn mags. (He'd have preferred the internet—after all, the internet was for porn, as people said. However, the internet was also for Trojan horses and spy ware, and it wouldn't do to be presented an updated firewall by his father with the friendly suggestion to be more cautious when he felt the urge to visit 'such sites, Son.')

It all worked. It didn't work perfectly, but it worked. He hadn't become impotent. Well, he'd known he hadn't since after Valerie's generous administrations he had been all but impotent—still, it was a huge relief.

What did bother him was the fact that in the lousy span of one hour, he could get it up only three times. That just sucked. Not even the most luscious picture, the thought, the most vivid memory could send even a twinge through his dick. And manual encouragement was beginning to _hurt_. Could normal men jack themselves raw? How wrong was that?

Sighing, he gazed at the pages and pages of heaving, dangling and bobbing curves around him, and tried to feel anything for them. He didn't. He felt drained, and stupid, and damn it all if his cheeks didn't heat up again.

"Relax. Apparently, this happens all the time. Ugh." Disgusted with the whole situation he swiped up the magazines, put them back in the box under his bed, washed up and redressed. The Lagavulin had warmed up nicely on the table, and he knocked it back without tasting it. Poured himself another and knocked that back as well. Getting drunk probably wasn't a very good idea, but it sounded pretty damn good to him at the moment.

He'd just finished that second glass when Victor rang from the lobby, informing him that his father had come to visit him, and did Mister Luthor wish to receive him?

Victor was SO much better than Charlie Falls. Lex opened his mouth to tell Victor that Mister Luthor Jr. would be pleased if Victor would plant his fist in Mister Luthor Sr.'s mouth and would pay for his lawyer in case the old man wanted to sue…and then he stopped. His heart beat faster.

"Yes," he purred into the receiver. "Send him right up, Victor."

"Yes sir," Victor replied, a hint of fear in his voice. Lex's lips spread in the most amazingly cruel smile. Daddy couldn't have picked a better time to pay him a visit. He could guess why Lionel was here: to berate him about the last week. But that was fine. Lionel wanted a battle? Lex was in the mood for total war. His entire body was screaming for it.

As he walked to the front door, his usual ramrod straight back curved slightly, shoulders drawing up just a hint in anticipation. His feet made no sound at all as he slunk over the carpet. He was dressed in his usual slacks and his shirt with the missing button, but he could just as well have been wearing camouflage paint and army boots, the hall could have been a jungle, and the unsuspecting man riding the elevator might have been Al-Qaeda.

Before Lionel had even cleared the elevator Lex opened the door. "Hello, Dad," he greeted his father with a shark-like grin. "How nice of you to drop by. Do come in."

Despite himself, Lionel's step hesitated. Lex smiled wider. Lionel studied him warily, but overcame his reservation and followed his son inside.

"Lex. How are you?"

"I'm fine Dad, just fine. Say, before you say what you've come here to say…Do you think you're up to a quick fencing match?"

TBC

There you go! I hope it lived up to your expectations (even though I kind of chickened out a little. I mean, I could have REALLY made him suffer, but I just couldn't get it over my heart. My soul isn't really pitch black yet, you know. It's more like a…deep, velvety midnight-blue colour).


	13. Chapter 13

**Thirteen: In which Smith makes his move**

"But now I still don't have a clue what drives him!" Chloe came to this voiced-aloud conclusion in the middle of Macy's, just as she was studying a pair of knee socks with reindeer heads. Two middle-aged women stared at her in shock and hastily moved away, probably thinking she was fuming over her sex life. Chloe was too caught up in her own thoughts to notice.

Smith was like a closed vat. Sometimes he opened the little faucet a little, and a thin stream of information and hatred poured out, but whenever she tried to get something out of him besides that stream, he hastily closed the faucet and she got nothing but hard wood and icy silence. Christ, but the man reminded her of Lex, in some ways. What was that saying again, the one about how you started to look like your worst enemy if you tried too hard to think like him and bring him down…

"No," she murmured to herself, putting a pair of the socks in her basket. "That's the one about dogs. Owners start to look like their dogs." She moved on to hats, carefully skipping the shoes. She didn't have room for more shoes. Her closets were bursting out of their seams anyways, and even the space beneath her bed was taken up. No more shoes. Hats. Clark could do with a nice dopey hat. And Lois too, after she'd managed to set her old one on fire with a forgotten cigarette.

"I'd probably do her a much bigger pleasure with a box of Marlboros," Chloe sighed. She pursed her mouth. That really was too bad for Lois. Her eye fell on a comical little blue knitted hat with feathers stitched along the border. It would lovely on Lois' brown hair, especially if she wore it loose. Chloe checked the price. Smiling, she added it to the growing collection of presents in her basket.

Evening shopping was marvelous. She loved the absence of small children, the milling about of hurried business people, the grabbing female hands that snatched the last sales away in front of each other. Christmas was only three days away, and the warehouse was suffused with the spirit of Christmas in all its greed and materialism like candied apples: it may be horribly sour beneath the tantalizing layer of sweetness, but she still loved it. The music, the lights, the smells, the sounds, the Father Christmasses sagging, exhausted after a day of entertaining kiddies, on their chairs, beards drooping and belly cushions hanging to the side.

She chatted with one of those Santas for a while, and he told her that 'Yes Ma'am, it's great fun, with all the kids, but I can tell you that by the end of the day, all I want is a big glass of eggnog followed by a stiff whiskey, and be glad my own kids have all moved out!'

Chloe could imagine. She tasted some truly disgusting eggnog, and some rather great Gluh wine at the food department, where she also collected her obligatory sweets and twelve bars of Swiss milk chocolate because they were on sale. She waged a small battle with another woman for an entire herd of cows made of sugar for Clark (he must miss his cows, she thought. He had to miss his cows here in Metropolis) and won with only a scratch on her hand.

She bought glass balls for her own Christmas tree, or rather, her Christmas branch, since there was no way she could fit a tree into her apartment.

She bought something to give to Sondra, her plant-friendly neighbor, and for the boy two floors down who always washed her car for her on the first Sunday of the month.

She shopped for three hours, until her arms quivered under the load of her presents, and still part of her brain was twisting around and poking at every word Smith/Jones/M had said, and trying to remember what questions he had evaded.

She didn't know why he wanted to bring down Lex. Oh, he'd given her lots of facts, some of which she recognized from his emails, and some from previous encounters. Lex broke rules. Lex caused people to suffer. People he'd known. But he wouldn't give her any names, and when she tried to pry them out of him he'd shut down like an oyster. Which led her to believe that there was something personal he blamed Lex for, something that had sparked this entire chain reaction of vengeance. But what…she couldn't find out.

She'd tried to find out a little more about Smith himself, had hinted at a certain case against LuthorCorp she'd 'accidentally' run into, in September, under Presiding Judge Harrisson (Lois had looked that one up for her; it had indeed been against LuthorCorp. Pollution. LuthorCorp had won). She even mentioned Billy Denver…but Smith only showed his tight smile, agreed that he'd been involved with that case, and refused to say another thing. When he left after an hour of prodding, he had told her precisely nothing she'd wanted to know.

Chloe had, when she found herself unable to concentrate on her free afternoon, gone back to the Daily Planet and tried to find out the name of the man who had rented the apartment Clark hadn't broken but had entered, but again she found nothing, since the only name she got was Jones. M. Jones. No previous addresses known. On a hunch, she had checked the list Lex had sent her, but among the LuthorCare personnel were only two Jones employed, and they were both accounted for. LuthorCare had one Smith, which was a black man from California. There were 104 people whose last name started with M, and 63 whose initials were M. By five, she was thoroughly sick and tired of Smith and his game, had given up and attempted cheer herself up by generating some endorphins by indulging in shopping.

It had worked…partly. Her wallet was light, as was her heart, her feet hurt and her arms were heavy while her head was swirling with the flashing Christmas lights and the never-ending carols…But deep down, her reporter persona still had her claws firmly hooked in the mystery that was Smith.

_Maybe,_ she thought as she carried her packages back to her car, _maybe I should discuss this with Lex. Subtly, without giving anything away—I don't like Smith, but if I can find level 3…If Lex DOES have a level 3, or has more than one…But if I expose Smith, all that information would disappear. All he's doing is trying to stop LuthorCorp from breaking the law…But I don't LIKE him. He's a creep! What's his history with Lex? Why's he hate him so much? _

Her thoughts kept bouncing forward and back, creating a line between her brows as she loaded her presents into the back of her car. Talk to Lex about Smith. Don't talk to Lex about Smith. It brought her nowhere. _Maybe I could just hint about him. Ask Lex if he's ruined someone's life in the past few months._ She snorted. _Yeah right, that'll be helpful. _

With a sigh, she dropped behind the steering wheel.

He hadn't called her, the red-headed bastard. (Despite her annoyance, she smiled at her own oath. Who could have thought that description would ever fit Lex Luthor?) Which meant that he had either died of the flu or that he was back in the running and was too busy to call her. Or had forgotten. Unlikely, but it was possible.

"So," she said aloud, guiding her car back into the chaos of the Metropolis Christmas Shopping Saturday Evening Traffic, "I can either wait until he deigns to call me, and run the risk he won't call, and then I won't have the chance to talk to him about Smith at all even if I wanted to, or I can call him myself. And then he'll think I'm eager."

Choices, choices. Why couldn't she have normal friends, who called when they promised to call, and who didn't have madmen after them howling for their blood? Why oh why couldn't she have male friends who discovered over the years that she was really the woman of their dreams and swept her off her feet and off to romance, instead of into bed for one night stands? She'd bought a marzipan green alien for Clark, about two inches high. In hind sight, she could have gotten one for Lex as well. He was just as weird as Clark. The only difference was that Clark tried to hide his E.T.ness and Lex embraced it, even though his alienness was thoroughly human, not from outer space. No, that wasn't it. He just wasn't aware of it. Lex had no idea he was not a few sandwiches short but a bowl of caviar and a bottle of champagne too much of a picnic.

"Damned idiot fits right in," she muttered, honking and flipping the bird to some retard in a yellow van. "No wonder he keeps coming back to Smallville. It's his natural home town. They should've called it Freakville after the meteor shower."

But then she recalled the hot weight of his head on her lap only a few days ago, and sighed. He was still weird, but he was definitely human. And like it or not, he was her friend and she loved him, even if he was a self-absorbed asshole. Who'd just been sick for the first time in twenty years. Surely he wouldn't think her eager if she said she was worried about him?

"Of course, Chloe. All of a sudden he's become horribly slow and forgotten all about Smith and your interrogation on the day he started sprouting hair. Of course he won't see through that lame excuse."

She parked her car in front of her house, unlady-like slipping it in just before another car could make the turn it was preparing to make to park in exactly that spot. Chloe ignored the car owner's enraged beeping and hand waving, got out and started to gather her stuff together.

Smith. Lex. Clark. Amy. Back to Lex. Back to Smith.

"I need chocolate." She juggled her tower of packages in one hand and opened the door of her flat with another. Chocolate would help her decide on her course of action. Good thing she bought all those bars at Macy's.

In the basement of Lex's penthouse was a gym the size of a soccer field. It also held a fencing mat, complete with all necessary equipment. This evening it was more or less deserted; ordinary people were out doing their Christmas shopping. Luthors, it was known, were nothing but ordinary.

Lionel looked up from the mask in his hands. "Is there a reason we're fencing?"

"No," Lex said sunnily. "I just feel like fencing. I haven't fenced in ages."

"So we're just…practicing? No wagers?"

"Not unless you had something in mind, Dad." Lex tried to scrape the manic grin from his face, but he couldn't. He turned away from his father and bit his tongue, hard. That helped. He really detested the taste of blood.

"Lex, Son. You're acting a little…peculiar. Are you sure you're alright?"

"Fine, Dad. Just fine." _I'm just drunk, as usual it seems, and I really want to kick the shit out of you, as usual it seems._ He smiled pleasantly, wincing at his sore tongue.

Lionel stared at him. The white protective body suit, under which his dark gray trousers looked rather funny, especially tucked into his socks and with those fencing shoes, made him look a little like an insane futuristic doctor. The expression on his face, as well, enhanced that image: mildly troubled curiosity. But that could be directed at Lex's hair as well; after all, when Lionel first saw it, it was hardly more than a fuzz. Now it was a lengthening crew cut. Daddy probably couldn't wait to run his fingers through it.

Lex put on his mask. "Are you ready?"

Lionel, with a small sigh, put his mask on as well. "Certainly. Five points?"

"Yes. _En garde_." He hefted his foil in greeting, brought it to his chin, swished it to the ground. His father echoed the gesture. They took their positions. "_Etes vous pr__ê__t?_" Lionel nodded, his face completely obscured by his mask._ "Allez_."

Lex attacked immediately from position four, but his father counter attacked and Lex had to fall back in order not to get skewered. Luthors did not fence with rubber-tipped foils, even if they did don protective clothing. Blunt foils were for playing sissies. Luthors did not play, they fought, and fighting was done with sharpened foils. Lex still had a scar somewhere, from when he'd literally impaled himself on his father's weapon, some ten or twelve years ago.

He grimaced behind his mask, the grin back, safely hidden behind black lattice. He loved a physical fight, even more than verbal battles. Maybe he'd been born in the wrong age. Surely, in Napoleonic times, when dueling was considered sport as well as a means to do away with your enemies, he would have been able to become at least a governor, or more, at 28, leaving a row of corpses in his wake. Instead of finding lawyers at the end of every business deal, he'd have been able to flourish…and people would have admired him for it, instead of calling him the spawn of evil.

Evil, lashing out with his foil, aimed a vicious attack at his weak left side and hit—but not his chest but his arm, brought up in defense. The point didn't puncture his skin or even his suit, but it hurt like a son of a bitch, and Lex knew he'd have one of those small purple bruises on his arm that would spread, over the days, to the size of his palm. Even when he'd still had his accelerated healing such bruises took two days or longer to fade away. He wondered how long it would take now.

The pain didn't faze him. On the contrary, it only made him snappier. He launched a series of _riposte_, _attacque_, _remise d'attacque_ and more _attacques_ that drove his father all the way back to the other side of the mat, and managed to hit him straight in the center of his chest. "Touché! There!" His epee whistled through the air as he whipped it away from his father's chest.

Lionel laughed. He rubbed his chest. "Four points to go before you've won, Lex. And remember, you might have scored the first point, but you've only beat me three times in your entire life. Don't crow victory yet."

_Three times?_ Lex wondered as he walked back to the center of the mat. _I can only remember two…_

This time Lionel asked whether he was _prêt_ and called _allez_, and proceeded to both disarm him _and_ stab him in the abdomen within three seconds. "Touché, Lex."

Despite his stinging hand and the pain of the hit, Lex's grin never wavered. "Show off," he said, picking up his weapon and rubbing his stomach.

Behind the black netting, Lionel's teeth gleamed with the same savage pleasure. Unfortunately for Lex, Lionel would have done a lot better in the Napoleonic wars, too. "Give it up, Son. You know you won't win."

"I thought you said the fight was more important than the victory, Dad," Lex shot back. "_Etes vous_ _prêt?"_

"Only when winning isn't your end goal. What have you been up to the last few days, Lex? I've tried to reach you all week but you kept avoiding me."

"I've been busy. _Prêt?_"

"_Oui_."

"_Allez_!" He stretched out his arm, threw himself forward and hit Lionel _point en ligne_**…**only to find the tip of his father's foil digging into his shoulder.

"Nicely done, Lex," Lionel drawled. "unfortunately it was _simultané_. Sorry, but the moment you'll hit me using that technique I'll be ready to retire." He took one step back. Lex did the same. "Busy, you said? Too busy to answer my phone calls? With what?"

"Just call ready, Dad, or I will," Lex snapped, and Lionel laughed.

"Very well. _Prêt?_"

"Yes," Lex snarled, and attacked. For almost a minute they slashed and stabbed at one another, their foils now ringing when they connected, drawing sparks when iron slid over iron, now tick-tacking like knitting pens, when they fell back and dueled more calmly to preserve their strength. Lionel pointed his foil from position six and began to stretch his arm and Lex began to defend…but halfway his move he realized that it was a feint—too late. Lionel's tip dipped sharply, neatly skirted around his defense and touched Lex gently, infuriatingly gently, on the heart.

"Touché."

"Damn it!" Angrily, he stalked back to his place on the mat.

"You're too hot-headed, Lex," Lionel said beatifically. "You lose your calm and dive into it as if it's a swimming pool. I've told you before and I will tell you again: you need to reign in your passions and approach everything, fencing bouts as well, with a level temper and a clear mind."

"Do you know what you can do with your level temper?" Lex growled. "_Etes vous p__rêt_ or are you going to insult me with more well-meant platitudes?"

Lionel chuckled, no doubt satisfied to see that he had once again succeeded in aggravating his son into mindless rage…but he was wrong about that, Lex vowed in silence. Oh yes, he was angry, but he'd been angry since leaving Valerie's house in the afternoon. Lionel's wisdom only sharpened his anger, there was nothing mindless about it. As he stood there, panting, sweat trickling down his face behind his mask, he for once delighted in the feeling and used it to focus instead of letting it blind him. And the world slowed down.

Lionel called ready and feigned to the left. Lex dodged his _arrêt_, then evaded the attack and the _remise_, made a beautiful _riposte_ and tapped Lionel squarely on the breast bone with a soft but audible 'tack!'.

"Two two," Lex said contentedly.

"Doesn't mean anything," Lionel retorted, barked the familiar question and sprang forward. Lex parried him easily.

"Come now, Dad," he said as their foils tapped against one another. "You're not the only one who refuses to be hit by that kind of attack."

"Complacency is not the right emotion to show during a duel," Lionel snapped back, performed a _coupé_ and bored his epee into Lex's belly.

"Ow!"

"Touché."

"Christ, Dad, that isn't _touché_, that's _evisceraté_!"

"Don't whine. You were the one who wanted to fence." But he stood back, smiling, while Lex gingerly ran his fingers over his stomach. There was a small tear in his suit, but his skin seemed to be more or less intact. "I don't see any blood," Lionel said. "Do you wish to forfeit or…"

"Never! Are you ready?"

"Come and get it, Son."

The clashed together and fought, dueling really was too moderate a term for the way they used their weapons. The blades clang, quivered, sang and hummed: a conversation, as it was known in Fencing terms, or _phrases d'armes_; the back-and-forth play of the blades in a fencing match, composed of phrases punctuated by gaps of no blade action. This particular conversation lasted for all but forty seconds, but when Lex finally managed to plant the tip of his foil on his father's shoulder he was gasping for air. Usually, technique was his weakness, not energy, but the flu had done something to his stamina—of course! It was the flu! He cheered up immediately—and losing that advantage made him inferior to his father. However, the inferior had to strive while those who were equal only had to try, and Lex was infinitely better at making strenuous efforts than half-hearted attempts.

Also, as Zen Tsu advocated in his Art of War: '_All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him._' Therefore, Lex exaggerated his exhaustion, just as he knew his father was exaggerating his. After all, they both knew the Art of War by heart.

Although, Lionel probably really was no better off. He might be in top condition, but he was still a middle-aged man, and his advanced technique did not wholly make up for his weaker build. Breathing heavily, the two men faced each other, leaning on their foils while they waited for one another to ask the question. Lionel took off his mask; he looked like a bedraggled owl with his hair standing up every way and sticking to his sweaty face. To Lex's pleasure the self-satisfied smirk had left his father's face.

"What's this, Dad? Are you giving up?"

Lionel sneered, combed his bare hand through his mane. "Of course not." He took a deep breath. "I just dislike the mask. It impairs my vision."

Lex took off his own mask, wiped the sweat from his eyes. "You'd rather fence without it? I don't mind."

In reply, Lionel tossed his mask to the side. Lex grinned. Dad wanted to see his face; when he was fighting, Lex's personal mask usually slipped and made all his thoughts show plainly on his face. _Hold out baits to entice the enemy. _He threw his own mask aside as well.

"Are you ready?"

"Whenever you are, Dad." They saluted, got back into position.

Five minutes later, Lionel threw his foil to the ground in an appalling display of sore losing.

"Five to three, Dad," Lex purred, balancing his own weapon on the tip of his finger. "You've lost."

A quarter of an hour later, after a very quick shower, they were back in Lex's sitting room, both sipping from a glass of whiskey. Lionel sat nursing his and his bruised pride, Lex nursed his, his victory glow and his bruised body. He had a scrape across his belly that looked as if he'd been branded. He had lovingly put a bit of calendula cream on it and wore it like a battle scar—which it was, in a way.

"So, Lex," Lionel started when he'd drunk most of his crushed ego back to a whole. "What have you been up to while you refused to get back to me?"

"I already told you, I was busy." Lex stretched, and relished the pain of bruised flesh. Victorious bruised flesh. Then he took pity on his poor defeated father. "I'm going to China next month."

"China!" His father sat up. "So you've completed negotiations?"

"Not yet. But Wong's invited me to come over for a few days and talk it over in person."

"That's good news." He regarded Lex from the corner of his eyes. "And this is what kept you busy over the week?"

"Amongst other things…" Lex drawled. "Which, since I just won, I don't feel compelled to divulge to you."

Lionel gave his trademark little chuckle. "If I'd known we WERE fighting over something, I wouldn't have let you win."

Lex laughed. "You didn't let me win. You never let me win, Dad."

Yet the remark rankled, and Lionel knew it. He settled back more comfortably in the couch's pillows, his long, thin fingers curled lazily around his glass, warming its contents. All of a sudden, Lex was almost violently disturbed by him. He tried not to let it show, but by the lowering of his father's eyelids he knew he had failed in hiding his emotions. Drat.

"So, Lex," Lionel opened. "I couldn't help noticing that you've given another interview. To the Daily Planet. About that missing girl."

"Amy," Lex said sharply. "Her name is Amy."

"Yes. Amy. The…ah…woman that conducted the interview…Miss Sullivan. Are the two of you…involved?"

For the second time in twenty years, Lex felt his hair bristle. It was longer now, and it tingled his scalp. He rubbed the back of his head. "No, Dad, we aren't involved. Why do you ask?"

Lionel waved an all but careless hand. "Oh, you know. It seems that she's published more interviews with you than any other reporter. And you've been seen together, too. I was surprised," he clarified. "Since she's such a…shall we say rural? little thing."

"That 'rural little thing' provided some spectacular evidence to put you in jail," Lex snapped, and immediately regretted it. Lionel's eyes narrowed.

"Yes," he hissed, "Miss Sullivan is very apt at getting and then spreading information she has no business acquiring. You should be careful, Lex. She might prove dangerous to you—as she proved dangerous to me, as you so kindly reminded me."

Lex took a big gulp to keep from rolling his eyes. "Chloe isn't of any danger to me," he said matter of factly. "Yes, we occasionally have coffee together, and when we do, we reminisce about Smallville. You remember Smallville, Dad? My secluded demesne in exile? Talking about it helps to lessen the trauma." He made sure there was enough sarcasm in his voice to convince his father that the trauma did not exist in reality—otherwise the old bastard might start blathering about his sanity again. If there was anything that made Lex see red, run for his golf clubs and start messing things and people up, it was talk about his 'fragile psyche'. He was perfectly right in the head, thank you. Well, maybe not perfectly. But nobody was perfect.

The glow of victory was gone, replaced by a smoldering anger. His stomach hurt, and the burn of the whiskey had lost its appeal. He slammed his glass on the table. "You stay away from Chloe Sullivan," he said. "I mean it, Dad. Keep away from her. And if you're quite finished, I'd…"

One day he was going to shoot his phone.

"Excuse me." He picked it up, opened it. Talk of the devil. It probably wasn't a good idea to let his father know Chloe had his personal cell number. "Lex Luthor."

"Hey Lex." Cheerful with a hint of accusation. "Um…you didn't call. I mean, I know you're probably busy, but you might have forgotten, so I'm just calling to say, to ask, well, are we still on for coffee? Tomorrow? If you can't make it, that's fine too, but I thought…"

"No," he said, interrupting the avalanche of words. "No, that's fine. Tomorrow's fine." He made a great show of opening his laptop and checking his schedule—empty, of course, on a Sunday.

"Oh." She seemed a little taken aback. "Um, what time?"

"Would four suit you?" he asked.

"Yeah, sure. Ah. You're not alone, are you?"

He repressed a smile. Perceptive. "No, I'm not."

"Ooooh, is it…_Lucifer_?"

Lionel stirred on the couch. Lex chewed on his still painful tongue. "Yes," he said somberly. "It is."

"I see," Chloe said. "Say Lex, Lex, what is he wearing? Do you know I've always pictured him in long johns and a Stetson?"

That infernal woman! Lex swallowed a snort. "No," he said gravely, "you are not correct."

"Then what? Silk boxer shorts with little hearts on them? Or Donald Duck? Or is he more a Y-front jockey type? Orrrrr…does he wear strings? I bet he wears strings. Purple strings. With an arrow on the front pointing down to the family jewels, and the text: _Search for treasure here_. Or…"

"I will see you tomorrow, then," Lex choked out, and hung up. He emptied his glass and promptly began to cough. Lionel raised his eyebrows.

"An appointment? On a Sunday? What woman could possibly want to make an appointment with you on Sunday?"

Damn the man's abnormal hearing. Lex considered tactics for a split second, then decided on one and shot him his most vulgar, your-son-is-a-whoring-slut smile. "Ah well, Dad, you know how it goes," he said huskily (which was not intentional, just a side-effect of coughing), "I have to beat them off me." He leaned forward for some extra spice. "It's the hair. Red hair is SO popular at the moment. It's a miracle I ever got any without it."

Success.

Lionel, with a mien of disgust, rose from his seat. "Do you remember what I said about keeping your passions in check?"

"Yes Dad. Was that before or after you lost our fencing match?"

His father's lip curled. "Next time, I won't let you win."

"'_To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself_.'" Lex quoted mockingly. "Thank you for this wonderful victory, Dad."

"'_If your opponent is of choleric temper_," Lionel quoted back, "_seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant_.'"

"Really Dad, you don't need to pretend you're weak for me."

"Watch yourself, Lex. Even Prometheus was tied to a rock to suffer for all eternity, and he was a god."

Lex sighed. "Spare me the mythical comparisons. I beat you fair and square. And you're no All Father either." He walked Lionel to the door, more to be certain that the man really left than because he wanted to be courteous. "Night, Dad."

Lionel mumbled something.

"What's that?"

"Will you at least be present at the meeting next week?"

"Of course." He had no idea what meeting his father was talking about, but he definitely intended to be there.

"And answer my calls if I do call upon you."

"Yes Dad. Good night, Dad."

Exit Lionel Luthor. He hadn't even had the chance to grill Lex about last week. Another victory, be it a small one. Lex leaned his back against the front door. He gently probed his stomach.

"Ow…But I won, Dad. You most certainly didn't let me win."

On Sunday morning, Chloe breakfasted only with coffee and a slice of melon. This, she decided, was the required atonement for devouring three bars of chocolate the previous evening. And for what? He'd immediately accepted. Men just didn't know what horrors they inflicted upon women when they did not call them.

She still felt slightly bloated.

By lunchtime her feelings of guilt had largely diminished, so she called Lois, who, poor thing, had weekend duty, and asked her if she could pick up a bagel for her. Lois said she'd be eternally grateful, so around one thirty Chloe sauntered into the Daily Planet with a paper carrying bag with two coffees and two bagels.

Lois was busy, as usual. She was typing out her Monday morning article while the LuthorCare list rattled behind her on Clark's computer—that is to say, the identification program rattled, the list only showed on the screen.

"Has this yielded anything interesting yet?" Chloe asked.

"Only a shitload of uninteresting people working on unidentifiable projects," Lois said. She yawned. "I'll be so glad to have this finished and start my holiday."

"You're off on Monday?"

"Yep! So I can get my shopping done on Monday and laze in bed all Christmas morning." She half-closed her eyes in anticipation. "We are only expected at the Kent's place at five, right? Not at two, or sometime horribly early as that?"

Chloe grinned. "Nah, I think Mrs. Kent sympathizes with our desire to sleep late. Is Clark going to show up today, or is he at another opening?"

"A press conference, actually," Lois said, wiping cream cheese from the tip of her nose. "I was hoping to see him before he left—he said he'd come by to hand something in, and I wanted him to read something…but you know Smallville, he comes, he goes, and you never know when."

Chloe tossed her napkin into Lois' overflowing dustbin, mm-ing in agreement. Yup, that about summed up Clark Kent. "How's your article coming along?"

"It's crawling, struggling and screaming, and I have to drag it forward by the scruff of the neck…but it'll come. Soon. Oh damn," she sighed as the phone began to ring, "that's what I hate about being here on a Sunday. You'd think people'd give me the time to actually write…Daily Planet, Lois Lane speaking, how can I help you?"

Chloe left her to deal with her call, made a slow round over the floor. Apart from Lois, this room was empty; a lone man was busily typing in a cubicle on the other side of the hall, but that was it for this floor. Her footsteps resounded loudly on the linoleum. Chloe's own floor, she knew, would be empty apart from Lin, who only worked in the weekends. Down in the basement there would be more people, those who had telephone duty. Lois' caller had probably been put through by one of those girls.

"Huh." She halted in her tracks. "I forgot to ask him where we were going to have coffee." She fished out her lovely little Nokia and checked the time. Almost two. Even if he and his dad had been fighting the entire night he was probably awake by now. Grinning, she selected Spaghetti.

"This is the voice mail of Lex Luthor," Lex picked up the phone. "He is currently going through his father's closet, hunting for purple strings. Please leave your number after the beep."

Chloe guffawed. "You're playing a dangerous game, Mister Luthor. What if I'd lent my phone to someone else?"

"Then someone else would probably feel very, very embarrassed on my account." She could picture the size of his grin by the sound of his voice. "What are you up to?"

"We forgot to pick a place for coffee."

"Huh." She heard the tapping of keys in the background. "So we did. Would you mind the lobby?"

"Only if you pay," she said materialistically—but good heavens, Lex's lobby café charged 6 dollar for a cup of cappuccino!

He chuckled. "Don't I always? But that's fine, I'll see you then…" He stopped.

"Lex? Are you still there? If you don't want to pay, I…"

"Chloe, check your phone. It's clicking." He abruptly hung up, leaving her staring dumbly at her feet. Clicking? Was her phone clicking? Yes, now that she thought of it, it sometimes gave a soft tick, about thirty seconds into a conversation. So what? Her personal phone crackled. Her home phone—when she still had a home phone—creaked when she called to someone in another state.

"Jeez, you're so paranoid!"

However, she did not try called him again, and studied her phone with a troubled expression. Lex knew all about listening devices—and not, she guessed, purely out of experience as one who was bugged. But this wasn't Lex, this was her, Chloe Sullivan, rising star reporter. Who would want to listen in on her conversations?

"Time to visit Clark when he comes back," she thought, and put the little phone away. It was only when she walked back to Lois' desk that she began to freak out at the idea of being tapped. What if it was true? Who could have done it? Why? Whom had she spoken through her Daily Planet phone? Did this mean someone had some perverse interest in her, and if so, why? And if not, who were they interested in? Lex? One of her other contacts? Or Clark?—she called him with this phone as well. Or Lois? As the daughter of a General with a lot of influence in the armed forces of Kansas, she'd been threatened before. Feverishly, she tried to recall the conversations she'd conducted by kitty phone in the last few weeks. Who'd she spoken with? All of the people that were first in her mind, but others as well. A senator. Perry, of course. Several colleagues. A few prominent figures in either politics, arts, or the movie industry. Oh my god, was she being stalked?

She pulled the cell out again, turned it round and round in her hands. Had her darling been tampered with? Had someone penetrated the sleek casing and inserted an unauthorized and malevolent baby? She regarded it like a snake, though it looked no different than it had before. Chloe whined. Where was Clark when you needed him?

Clark, as it turned out, was always right behind you when you needed him.

"Hey, Chloe."

"Clark!"

He raised a perfect eyebrow. "You certainly seem happy to see me…?"

She thrust the phone at him. "Clark, is my phone being tapped?"

He blinked. "Excuse me?"

Chloe leaned closer to him and hissed in a whisper so that Lois, half a room away, wouldn't hear, "X-ray it for me, will you? It…it clicked. I got the idea it might be, you know…"

"Tapped." Clark finished for her. He heaved a deep sigh. "Every time I think people are happy to see me for me, but in fact, it's only because of…"

"Clark," She opened her eyes wide. "Please? I'm really worried."

He sighed again, but obediently squinted at her phone. As always, Chloe stared right along with him, but all she saw was a flat, black phone. "What do you see?"

"Uh…a phone?"

"But you don't see anything…out of place?"

"You know," Clark turned the phone around and peered at the back. "I don't really know all that much about phones. There's something in there, but that might either be the chip that makes it work, or the thing that enables GPS." He gave her a sheepish grin. "Now if you'd show me a tractor…"

She snatched her phone back. "So you don't see anything weird?"

"Not really. No listening devices—not like the ones I found in Lex's…" He grimaced, cut off his sentence. "What made you think someone was listening in to you anyway?"

She looked away. "Nothing. It was clicking. I just heard it tick. Heh." She echoed his hangdog grin. "I guess I kind of went Jerry Fletcher when I noticed. Thanks."

"You might be bugged," Clark destroyed her peace of mind. "Only I didn't see it. There's nothing in there that gives out a signal, but with the current technology…"

"Current technology has provided me with an extra cell phone," Chloe said, tossing the kitty phone into her bag and retrieving her old, plump, yet beloved cell from its depths. She firmly closed the clasps of her bag, shutting away her traitorous phone and presented Clark with one of her dazzling smiles. He raised his eyebrow again. "So how are you, Clark?"

"Busy," he realized with a start. "I need to send in my story about illegal racing…My internet was down. And I have to be in Met-South by three for Dempsey's press conference."

"Dempsey the copy machine harasser?"

He laughed. "Now, that woman dropped all charges, so we can't call him that, can we? Although Allan's cartoon was really, really good. It looked just like him. So yeah, Dempsey the copy machine harasser. Him."

Chloe smiled. "People that hold press conferences on Sundays are officially supporters of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Either that or they must be Scientologists. No well-meaning Christian or non-believer would ever draw people away from their families on a Sunday."

"Really? I must make sure to ask him." He grinned. "See you around, then, Chloe."

"At Christmas," Chloe reminded him. "The farm, at five, right?"

"Mom wouldn't mind if you'd show up earlier…" Clark said slowly. "But yeah, five's fine. Damn, I really have to run now."

"Yeah, you're such a slow poke. Better hurry it up, Kent!"

Clark stuck out his tongue. Sometimes, one really wouldn't say he was almost twenty-four. Of course, no one would ever think such a thing of Chloe either. She stuck out her tongue as well. Hers was longer anyway.

"See you on Tuesday, Clark. I'll…"

"Hey Smallville!" Lois' less than tinkering voice bayed. Clark grimaced. 'Her Dark Majesty moos,' he mouthed. 'Better see what she wants or face her wrath.'

"You two make SUCH a cute pair," Chloe whispered back. She yelped as his eyes literally heated up her arm. "Bye Lois! See you on Christmas! Don't terrorize Clark too much!"

"Fuck you very much!" Lois called back cheerfully. "Bye!"

Chloe arrived in the Lobby of Lex's penthouse at the same time as he stepped out of the elevator. She repressed the wild urge to bound over and ruffle her hands through his adorable fluff. Instead, she smiled, bounded over and put her hands in her pockets.

"Hey, Mulder. How's your conspiracy theory today?"

Why did all men react in the same way to whatever she said? He arched an eyebrow.

"Conspiracy theory?" They picked a table and he pulled back her chair in a gesture so automatic he didn't even seem aware he was doing.

"Yeah!" She plunked down, rattled her bag at him. "The phone!"

"Ah, yes, your phone." He sat down himself, winced and put a hand on his stomach. "Do you mind if I have a look at it?"

"Do you have x-ray vision?" She only just swallowed the 'too'. Lex's mouth curled in that mysterious little smile that made her feel slightly uneasy—as if he'd heard the 'too' very clearly, and knew exactly what, or rather who, she was talking about. "Sure," she hastily talked over it, and rummaged around in her bag. "Here."

She put the phone in his outstretched hand, then almost had a heart attack as one of the genie waiters, seemingly rising up from a flower basket, asked her if she'd like to drink something.

"Latte, please," she gasped, putting a hand over her pounding heart. "With whipped cream and caramel." _I need caffeine. And sugar. That shock drained everything right out of my system._

Lex didn't even look up. "Cappuccino," he said shortly. He drew something out of his jacket's pocket. It looked a little like a miniature Geiger counter, complete with ear plugs.

Chloe gaped. "Is that," she said, "what I think it is?"

He smiled easily. "That depends on what you think it is." He put one of the plugs in his ear and turned on the little machine, moving it slowly over the little cell.

"Huh. I think maybe I should start calling you a Lone Gunman instead of Mulder. You have a _bug catcher_?"

"Oh, is that what they call it in journalistic circles?" He frowned, turned the Nokia around and traced it with the detector.

"Do you see anything?"

"Not really." He swept the phone once more from back to front, then put it on the table. "It seems clean."

"Oh. Good. What a relief. Lex, why the hell do you have a bug detector?" She jerked as her coffee unexpectedly appeared in front of her.

He waited until the waiter had gone up in thin air. "Well…My first reaction, when suspecting the presence of electronic listening devices is…somewhat violent. It was rather destructive for my furniture and bad for my golf clubs. Especially my Iron number 3 suffered under what you might call my paranoia," he flashed her a self-deprecating smile that was only partly mocking. "The only way to save both my golf clubs and my stereo installation…not to mention my lamps and other electric devices was to get one of these." He nodded at the detector on the table and stirred his coffee.

"Ah," Chloe said weakly. Sometimes, she thought that Lex's stay in Belle Reve wasn't entirely unjustified. "I see. And, does it help?"

"I think so." He took a pensive sip. "I haven't killed a television in nearly five years."

"Lex?"

"Yes, Chloe?"

"You're a little bit insane, aren't you?"

"I used to be schizophrenic but we're better now," Lex replied unperturbedly. He took another drink of coffee—and once again, Chloe had no idea what kind of mood he was in. She tried to read his expression but his face was like a pleasant mask, blank and smooth, his eyes only reflected her own face. _He is on the defensive_, she realized. _He always looks this way when he thinks I'm going to bury him in accusations._

She sighed. If Lex was already preparing his battlements, there was no way she was going to pry anything out of him. "Don't worry," she said listlessly, and spooned a huge dollop of caramel-covered cream out of her beaker. "I'm not going to ask you anything about Level 3."

"No?"

"No. Nor ask you anything about Smith or his claims. Or about the files he sends me."

"You're not?" He seemed pleased. Then his brow furrowed. "Why not?"

"Because you're going to be mean and stuck up about it. I know, I can tell by the look on your face."

"Mean? Me? I'm never mean to you?"

"Well, no, but you try to be, sometimes. According to Lois…" She knew she'd made a mistake mentioning her cousin the moment she looked up from her coffee. His eyes narrowed, the corners of his mouth drew up in a hostile smirk.

"Ah, Lois," he drawled. "Our muffin-peddling smoke machine. How is she? Still aspiring a political career?"

Chloe sighed. "Forget it."

"No, no, tell me what Lois is thinking. I insist."

"No. We're not going to discus Lois nor what she thinks of you. Let's talk about something else."

"Like what? Do tell me your suggestion." There was something fascinating about the way he could go into full out guerilla mode within the blink of an eye. She didn't know what had triggered it, and she'd never seen it directed at her personally before, but even though she wasn't happy about it, she did study it with interest. She couldn't precisely tell what had changed about Lex, only that all of a sudden, the man sitting in front of her was definitely not the same person she'd teased only a few minutes before. Not the man she called a friend.

This man was the kind of person that unblinkingly scratched innocent people's futures.

This man was as dangerous as a cougar in a snow field.

This man eerily resembled his father.

For the second time in two days, she was seriously creeped out by the person she was having coffee with.

She stared into eyes like mirrors, seeing herself distorted like the people in a play by Sartre, and said the only thing that came up in her mind. "Lex. Don't be such a Luthor."

His reaction was instantaneous, as if she'd taken hold of a rubber band strung between his ears, pulled it back and released it to hit him between the eyes; he started, and for a split second, just as the reflecting layer in his eyes cracked, she saw horror, like a black writhing mass, seep out between the splinters…Then he cast his eyes down, and when he looked back up he was himself again.

Calm.

Composed.

God, she felt sorry for him.

"Sorry," he said. His smile was gone.

"That's ok."

_No, _she thought, _that wasn't ok. That was freaky. I didn't know about THAT particular Shrekian layer, and I'm not sure I wanted to know._ She searched his face from below lowered lashes, but it was really completely back to normal, no hint of that terrible other persona showing. _Forced back, or hidden? What, exactly, is Lex's mask? How deep does it go?_

"I said I was sorry," Lex said with a hint of irritability.

"And I said it was ok."

"You _said_ it was ok, but now you're…" he made a vague gesture. "Freaking out on me."

Chloe curled her hands around her beaker, grateful for its lingering warmth. "Well, yeah," she said. "You going all Jekyll and Hyde on me kind of spooked me. It's ok, I just need to process it. No big deal. Talking about processing," she eagerly grasped for another conversational straw, "how's your hardware? Everything functional again?"

Lex wrinkled his nose. "Don't talk to me about hardware." His eyebrow twitched. "Jekyll and _Hyde_?"

"Well what can I say, Lex. You can be pretty fucking scary if you want to. Or rather, if you don't want to."

He said nothing, stared at the table.

Chloe sighed. "What'd Lionel do to you this time? Whoop your ass?"

"Actually, I whooped his," Lex said, not looking up but with a quirk of his mouth. "Fencing is such a wonderful sport."

"Men pointing thin, rigid weapons at one another and whacking each other around," Chloe said, grateful the awkwardness had passed. "Yeah, I can see the attraction. You can't get any more phallic."

"Fencing isn't about comparing sizes!" Lex protested. "It's about skill and agility and…well, maybe it is a little bit phallic."

"I prefer hiking, myself."

"You practice a _sport_?"

Chloe was offended. "Are you calling me fat?"

Sheer bafflement made Lex momentarily look like a stranded fish. "Fat? How did you come to that conclusion? How could you possibly come to that conclusion? I was just wondering…because you never…You know, never mind. Would you like another coffee?"

Chloe would. They had another coffee, and Chloe indulged in apple pie because she thought she could do with a reward after facing and conquering a Luthor. Then they both had a glass of wine, and she suddenly remembered that she had left her laundry in the dryer, and that if she went home really fast she might still salvage her clothes from dryer rot.

"Dryer rot?" Lex asked, amused. "Does such a thing actually exist?"

He probably never even touched a dryer in his life. "Yes," she said. "It's disgusting. All your clothes get these little white hairs and it smells like old cheese in a brown-out fridge."

"That sounds horrid," he said dryly. Then, almost shyly, "You are leaving because of that, aren't you? It's not because of…anything I said?"

She smiled, and briefly touched his arm. "Nah. I don't scare that easily. What are you doing on Christmas Eve, anyway?"

"Very little, I think. Some party. Get spectacularly drunk and embarrass my father. Or maybe I'll just stay home. Why?"

"I'll call you," she promised. _Windows…those lovely windows…That amazing sky line…_ "I'll call you tomorrow. Unless you'll be busy?" She got up, and he did that slowly-looking-up thing again, which really should be x-rated because it was sinful.

"No, I wasn't planning on doing much tomorrow."

She had to swallow before she could speak. "O-ok." Of course, she could also let her clothes rot.

No. She'd simply call him tomorrow. Anticipation made everything sweeter, right?

"I'll call you tomorrow, then."

He only smiled in reply, and she needed all the sugar she'd consumed to bring up the resolve to walk out of the lobby. The cold air hit her face like a slap; tiny snow flakes drifted from the sky, melting and turning to a drizzle before they even landed.

"Christ. How does he do that?" She pulled the hood of her coat over her head.

"Chloe! Wait!"

She turned around, ready to be swept off into the elevator…but he only brought her her cell phone.

"You left it on the table."

_And now ask me to stay, offer me an entirely new wardrobe if I'd only stay…invite me up and show me yet another layer, cook me spaghetti and just DO something…_The phone still held the warmth of his hand. It fitted exactly in her palm.

Lex opened his mouth. "Chloe…" Someone shoved into him. At the same time, someone else pushed a hard, cold thing into her back.

"What…?" Lex said, but a familiar voice told him to be silent.

"Or my associate will shoot your little friend in the back," Smith said from the depths of a cowled jacket. "And then, Mister Luthor, I will shoot you."

"Smith?" Chloe gasped. She half-turned, but the thing prodded into her shoulder, and she froze.

"No. Not Smith," Smith said softly. He gave Lex a little push. "There's a car right in front of you. Get in."

"Let the girl go," Lex said. "She's got nothing to do with…" He grunted; Smith must have bored his own gun into his back.

"On the contrary," Smith hissed. "She's got everything to do with you. Open the door, Lex, you'll find it unlocked. And no sudden moves or you'll find a nice little hole in your right lung."

"You're insane," Lex said. He sounded abnormally calm. "The streets are crawling with cops. You can't…"

"Lex!" Chloe cried. She heard an ominous click coming from the gun, now digging into her spine.

Still, he did not panic. "Fine. I'll come with you. Just let her go."

"No," said Smith. "You will both get into that car, and you'll do it now, or I'm going to club you over the head, haul your unconscious body inside and then get her into the car, and shoot her there. Your choice. Now move."

As he was speaking, he'd already pushed them towards a big, black land rover, parked neatly in front of the penthouse apartments. Lex fidgeted in front of the door, unwilling to give up struggling. Smith's partner had dragged Chloe to the other side of the car, opened the door by reaching over her shoulder and shoved her inside. As she tumbled inside, she shoved her phone, that beautiful flat little phone, into the cuff of her boot. Before she could even sit up, Lex fell in from the other side, and Smith shoved in after him, drew him up and pushed him down next to Chloe. He himself sat down on the seat facing them—he'd rearranged the entire car, creating some sort of weird Limousine/Land Rover hybrid. His associate ducked into the front seat and started the engine.

No cops came running.

No one even seemed to notice. The car moved away from the curb and drove silently into the pre-Christmas traffic.

Smith pointed his gun, a modes thing, but bulky because of silencer screwed onto the barrel, straight at Lex's heart. Lex ignored the gaping hole in front of him, his eyes intent on Smith's face.

"I know you," he said calmly.

Smith shook his head. "No, we have never met."

"Oh, I'm positive that we have." Guerilla mode had been turned on again; even though she could not tear her eyes away from the gun, Chloe could hear it in his voice. She was infinitely grateful to hear that horrible flat tone. "I never forget a face, you see. And I am certain I have seen you before."

Smith smiled. "Not me," he said. "But you did meet my father. People say the family resemblance is rather impressive. Perhaps you remember him? You shot him, after all. Several times. Do you remember?

His name was Morgan Edge."

TBC

Dun Dun DUNNNN


	14. Chapter 14

Cheer! Thank you for your reviews (forgot that last time). Ooh, 'Channeling his inner evil Lionel' is so cool—can I use that line? J As for fencing: yeah, I used to fence. For four years. It's an incredibly cool sport, but I kind of sucked at it. I lack competitive spirit, and I was lazy, preferring reading and typing over hard physical training…It did get me a VERY muscular right arm, though, and impressive-looking bruises.

I have to warn the people who might think this is a cute romance (I don't know how they could have gotten that idea, but someone might have); the cuteness stops here. It may pick up again, but right now, things go dark. Midnight blue dark…

Fourteen: In which vengeance is served in five courses 

"Morgan Edge," Lex said immediately, "does not have a son. I checked." He had checked, and he had not found any children—however, by the resemblance alone, he was convinced Smith really was Morgan Edge's son. Saying he did not believe him was more to gauge his reaction than a statement of disbelief. Smith, or Edge, appeared to be the talkative kind of guy to him. And the more people talked to Lex, the less easy they found it to do something to him; he either scared them into abandoning their plans, or managed to detain them long enough for someone else to arrive and force them to abandon their plans.

Edge walked into it with open eyes. "You should have checked better," he spat, but there was a hint of satisfaction in his voice, and that told Lex more about Edge than a handwritten resume.

Lex, after his second kidnapping experience at the age of fourteen, had followed a course on how to negotiate with thugs. His father's ex-Marine had proved unable to teach him how to respond to threats of this kind; instead, Lionel (undoubtedly disgusted by his distraught child's pathetically panicked reaction to being abducted and kept in a basement for three days before the aforementioned Marine rescued him) had arranged for an FBI negotiator to teach him the fine art of profiling and negotiating. He'd been a talented pupil...As his father had noticed to his own displeasure; Lex got so good at reading his own father that Lionel's authority, both paternal and as a general cruel bastard, was all but negated. That had been the year that pitiful little Alexander cleared the stage and Lex had made his introductions.

Six abductions and fourteen years later, Lex had gotten rather good at using his teachings. He'd been practicing; they'd proved pretty useful at business negotiations too. The fact that he did not have a concussion and was not tied to a chair helped him keep his head level, his emotions in check. Calm reasoning, he'd found, was somewhat difficult with a debilitating headache and strapped to a chair.

What he was not happy about was the gun with the silencer—that smacked of professionalism even if the way Edge held it did not—nor about Chloe's presence next to him. He could feel her fear beating at his consciousness, distracting him. Having her here was a weakness. It threatened to undo his sense of self-preservation. Why had Edge taken her along? Because of some personal grievance with her, or because he thought she was tied to Lex? If it was for the latter reason, he might be able to protect her, give Edge the impression she meant nothing to him. If it was for the first…

He had to make sure Edge let her go. No matter what happened, he had to make sure she was out of this car before it got to its destination, wherever that was.

"You were hidden," Lex said, intently studying Edge's face for flickers of emotion—fear, doubt, aggression, excitement. Those flickers would tell him when to talk and when to keep silent. "By your father. In Europe? You have a slight British accent."

"You're right," Edge said, with a cold smile. "Very sharp. You've been a magnificent opponent, Lex. I assure you it is with regret that I have decided to follow this course of action. However, it is your own fault."

"My fault? How so?" Lex noted, with growing anxiety, that they had now left the outskirts of Metropolis and were going south. Out here, the road lights were few, and with the tinted windows, it was hard to recognize the surroundings.

"Don't look outside," Edge said, gesturing with the gun. Immediately, Chloe's face turned toward her own window. "The same counts for you." He changed his aim from Lex to Chloe, who froze, eyes huge in her face. "Give me your bag, Miss Sullivan."

Thankfully she didn't protest, just handed it over. Having a gun pointed at you had that effect. Lex wished he could reassure her, tell her he wouldn't let anything happen to her. He cleared his throat, wanting that weapon away from her and on him, or preferably aimed somewhere else entirely. As he hoped, the gun followed Edge's eyes and once more pointed at his chest.

"You know my name. What's yours?"

"Martin," Edge said easily—too easily. He was far too ready to talk. "Martin Edge."

"That's nice," Lex said, sitting back and forcing himself to relax. This way he could feel the car rev up better. They were taking a slow turn south-east. Route 4. "Two double Ms. Both our fathers seem to favor first and last names with the same letter."

Would he fall for that? Yes, he did.

"Your name is Alexander. Not Lex." The barrel swerved again. "Don't look out of the window, Miss Sullivan."

Chloe opened her mouth, but Lex talked over her, talked the gun back to his own chest. "Only on my birth certificate. Why don't you let the girl go? She's got nothing to do with me." Trust Chloe to be offended at a moment like this. She looked at him with fire in her eyes. He ignored her as best as he could.

Edge chuckled. "It won't work, Lex. I know what she is to you. It really was a strange coincidence that I saw her walk into your lobby. I trust you had a good time together?" He and his weapon turned towards Chloe again, and she shrunk back in her seat. The expression of amusement had vanished again; he could have been a statue for all Lex knew. "How much did you tell him? Enough so he could trace down and destroy the evidence?" He shook his head, his eyes not leaving Chloe's for a second. "You bitterly disappointed me, Miss Sullivan. Of all the reporters I approached, I had the most faith in you. You seemed promising, ethical. Honorable, even. You had a history with him, more than once you tried to get him convicted for a crime—you helped putting Luthor senior behind bars, yet at the same time he trusted you. What for, I cannot gather, but still…However, he has bought you too, it seems. With money? Or lies? I had hoped you'd be less susceptible than the others…

"Keep still," he ordered, as Lex shifted in his seat. There was a sharp quality to his voice, so Lex held still and was silent for several miles, until the gun drooped a few millimeters, indicating that Edge's nervousness had abated.

"Chloe Sullivan isn't to blame," Lex said. "As you said, I buy people."

"Lex!" Chloe hissed, but this time the gun did not waver. That was good. He was used to guns. Besides, it was almost Christmas. Edge was only a little bit early for Point Your Arms At Lex Day.

"I buy people," Lex repeated. "Just like my father. And like yours. Surely you know who and what your father was."

"Of course," Edge said agreeably. "He was an extortionist, a criminal and a murderer. He was the very reason I studied law; to bring people like him down. He was, however, my father, and you killed him."

_Ah, so that's why he talks so much._

"You _are_ a lawyer!" Chloe exclaimed.

"Not yet," Edge said, pointing his gun at Chloe again. Lex wished she would shut up and stop drawing attention to herself. "These last two years have been very educational for me, though."

"Where did you study law?" _Keep him talking. Lawyers love to talk, and as long as he was talking he wasn't likely to shoot anyone_. Thus Lex reasoned, but all of a sudden he wasn't so sure anymore. Edge did not behave according to any of the patterns Lex was familiar with.

"As I told Miss Sullivan, I am not in the habit of discussing my background with people I don't fully trust."

"I'm hurt."

"Good."

They sat in silence for a good couple of minutes. Martin Edge's weapon, though unerringly pointed at Lex, once more dropped a little. The good thing about that was that he seemed to be relaxing his guard. The bad thing was, Lex figured, that if he suddenly decided to shoot Lex could wave his balls goodbye.

The car zoomed steadily south-west. Lex was glad he was riding forward; he thought he recognized the road, route 4, that led to Smallville—he frowned as they slowed down and turned right before speeding up again. They were going pretty fast, 70, 80 miles an hour. And if he was correct, they were now speeding toward Deep Rock Vale, which was not a vale at all but a forest.

A forest.

He didn't want to go into a forest.

The barrel was raised back to his heart again. "There's nothing outside that is of any interest to you, Mister Luthor," Edge said.

"Where are we going?"

"You'll find out."

"What do you want from me?"

"What do you think?"

The man was infuriatingly elusive. His flapping tongue categorized him as the 'confessor' type, but he uttered nothing but vagueness. Lex decided to take a dare, implicate himself. After all, there was only one reason he could think of why Edge could possibly want to abduct him. "Revenge for your father? If you know how he died, you also know that I killed him in self-defense."

"Yes, that was what I read in the papers," Edge scoffed.

"He was trying to kill me."

"Be quiet."

"Your father," Lex said slowly and with emphasis, "worked together with my father, with Lionel Luthor. Together they blew up an apartment in what's known as the Suicide Slums…"

"I told you to shut up." His voice did not rise, but the gun did. It pointed straight at Lex's right eye. "I know all that," Edge continued, again confusing Lex's profiling. "They worked together to assassinate your grandparents. I told you I knew what kind of man he was. I was not surprised to hear that he had died in the way he had. Still, he was my father. I wanted to see his killer—a man who walked free after planting five bullets into his chest."

"In self-defense." It was important to stress that.

"So you say."

Lex was temporarily distracted as the car left the road and drove into the forest. Anxiety clenched his gut, made it difficult to think. He didn't know what he should do or say. Chloe's proximity didn't help either; he had no idea how to make Edge forget about her. Denial. Denial might work.

"So it WAS. He tried to kill me. I defended myself."

"I know how you defend yourself. I studied you these two years. It was…highly rewarding. Never dull. Like observing a redback spider skulking in the grip of a shovel, ready to strike the oblivious gardener."

_I've been kidnapped by Steve fricking Irwin,_ Lex thought, then frowned as he processed the information. _Redback spiders…aren't those from Australia? His accent sounds British, but might it be simulated to trick us? If so…what the fuck is going on?_

Edge was talking again, now supporting the gun with both hands as they drove over the bumpy forest road. The eyes with the odd white lashes stared unblinkingly into Lex's. "Even if I detest and fear a creature, I don't mind admitting my fascination with it," he said in those polite, clipped tones. "Watching you, studying you…I realized my father, for all his crimes, was nothing compared to you."

"Excuse me?" Despite the situation, Lex could not contain his indignation. "Your father was a homicidal…"

"Be silent or I'll shoot you."

"Shoot me now and shoot a tire off your car," Lex snapped angrily. In response, Edge whipped the gun back at Chloe and pressed it against her forehead. She gave a quickly suppressed whimper and Lex threw up his hands, leaned back.

"Ok. Ok. Leave her alone."

"Be silent. I will shoot her if you don't shut up."

Lex pressed his lips together, balled his hands to fists to keep from planting them in Edge's face.

Edge chuckled. If looks could kill, Chloe alone would have been a murderess. Lex would probably have been charged with doing unspeakable things to a dead man's body, too.

"And you say she means nothing to you? You're very eager to give up your own life for hers, aren't you? You see, that is what makes you so intriguing. You honestly seem to care about people, even if you use and abuse them. You have this code of honor, this…inane desire to protect those you care for, or feel indebted to, somehow. And at the same time, you are entirely ruthless. Where my father had people killed, or killed them himself, you simply erase them, or have them erased. Your hands remain clean, but the body count keeps rising. How many homeless people have died in Level 3 facilities? How many laws did you break with the testing of that atomic weapon on the Green isles? Were people even aware of what you were doing before I leaked that story to the papers? You still need to tell me how you slithered out of that lawsuit. My preparations were perfect. There were 14 dead! How could you possibly get that case thrown?"

He shook his head, something akin to admiration in the twist of his lip. Lex still didn't dare to say anything, not while the gun was still aimed, if a little askew, at Chloe. Slowly but certainly, he began to feel real fear seep through his carefully maintained calm. Part of him maintained that someone who talked that much, revealed so much of himself, couldn't be a real threat. But another part wasn't so sure about that.

The man was clearly crazy, but in a terribly sane way. In some way, it was almost as if he were looking into a mirror. Being constantly thwarted, unchangingly defeated could damage a man's soul and change it. He knew all about it. He knew what it had done with his own soul.

For more than ten minutes, Edge let him stew in this understanding. Outside, it was so dark that the glow from the desk board instruments lit up the car like a lamp. Lex's light blue shirt contrasted sharply with the dark interior and made him feel uncomfortably like a bull's eye. They had slowed down to a mere 10, 15 miles per hour; sometimes twigs scratched the sides of the car. The gun moved back from pointing at Chloe to pointing at Lex. Chloe opened her mouth a couple of times, but both a warning glance from Lex and a twitch of Edge's gun-wielding hand shut her up. Apart from fright, she was now also radiating frustration with being forced to keep silent.

_She really is an amazing girl, _Lex conceded. _No wailing, no screaming, no shocked weeping in the corner. Good god, I think she's even trying to twist off the safety belt's clasp. Mm. I guess if you hit someone hard enough with one of those things…they might get a scratch._ He was proud of her. She behaved admirably. He felt a warm wave of affection stream through him—_my perfect woman: someone who accompanies me during another abduction and neither organized it, nor panics while it happens_—and smirked at himself. If he got out of this alive, he really should pay a visit to a good psychiatrist. Your kidnapper's car was probably not the proper place for warm fuzzy feelings.

"The thing is," Edge broke the silence, "the longer I studied you, Lex, the more revenge as a purpose lost its importance. It was never far from my thoughts, mind, but it gradually became…lost…in the understanding of what kind of man you are." The tight smile was back. "An admirable man, in many ways. But Hitler was an admirable man, in many ways, too. So was Stalin. So was Napoleon. Yet if they had been halted early on in their career, many innocent lives would have been saved."

"You can hardly compare me with Hitler," Lex remonstrated, stomping down on the terror that was threatening to overwhelm him. _Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!_

"I didn't say that I did," Edge said. "Just that if they had been stopped, lives could have been saved. The law failed those people. It's threatening to fail again."

"You hardly give me…"

"Be silent, Lex."

The car slowed to a crawl, then stopped altogether, its engine ticking. The driver got out and opened the door on Chloe's side.

"Get out," Edge said to her, keeping his gun trained at Lex.

"I want to, I demand to know…" Chloe began hotly, then screamed when the man roughly hauled her out of the car and dragged her off.

"You too," Edge said, gesturing with his weapon. "Slowly. Don't think of running or I'll shoot her in the stomach and leave her here." He leaned forward, eyes gleaming in the near darkness. "I don't mean her any harm—as you said, you buy people. I'd hoped she would be strong enough to turn you down, but knowing you, I shouldn't be surprised that she could not. Being weak is not enough reason to die, not for me, in any case. But if you run, I'll kill her. Remember that, Lex. She does not need to die."

He nodded, not trusting his voice to be steady enough to speak. _Fuck this all to hell._

"Move it," said Edge, and Lex joined Chloe in the glare of the Land Rover's headlights.

Chloe had kicked the heel of her boot against Edge's partner in crime's shin so many times now that by all accounts the man could not have any skin left on his legs…but he still held her fast. She twisted and struggled, tried to bite him and shrieked in rage and frustration, but all that accomplished was that his fingers bit painfully into her arms, her shoulders ached, and she had lost any dignity she'd been trying to salvage. When Edge marched Lex out of the car and into the light as well she stopped fighting. What was the use anyway? She couldn't win.

She tried to catch Lex's eye, but Edge made him walk a bit further away from them until he stood with his back against a tall tree, full in the car's blinding light. He squinted, held up his hand to shield his eyes. She thought that his irises flicked into her direction once, but the moment Edge began to speak again he stiffened, focused on him completely—and so did Chloe, even though listening to him made Chloe sick with trepidation.

"Law," Edge said slowly, as if he were giving a lecture. "It's such an ingenious, wonderful system. So much more sophisticated than _this_." He indicated the gun. "I wanted to settle this in a civilized manner," he continued, "Just to show myself that it IS possible to beat people like you by law, not by violence. But it's…" He shook his head, laughing. His eyes were cold, though, when he said, "You've got yourself killed because your lawyers are too good, Lex."

_Wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait. You've got yourself __**killed**_

"Because you're too good at hiding the evidence and getting rid of any meaningful witnesses. You're far too experienced at burying filth for your own good, and now it's going to do you in. I've tried everything—everything!—to bring you down, and god, there's so much to go on! You wouldn't believe how much unspeakable evil burrows its way into the world from the hidden levels of LuthorCorp, Miss Sullivan." She started as he suddenly turned to her. "Every link I gave you, every line of figures…Did you actually have them checked out or were you too busy sucking up to him?"

"It broke the law," Chloe said. Her voice was high and tremulous, both with fear and anger. "But it didn't actually harm those kids!"

"But the links! He's responsible for it, you know! It was some kind of poison, some kind of fertilizer—they sold it to the agricultural ministry and it was used four years ago! This cancer…he knew all about it! And his so-called altruism is nothing but another cover-up! He's a lying bastard and he should be begging on his knees for forgiveness!"

"The links were dead!" Chloe cried. "I couldn't get in!"

"Of course she couldn't," Lex said coolly. "You can't find what isn't there."

Somewhere in the back of Chloe's mind a swooning little voice sighed, _omigod, you're SO cool…!_ The rest of her was almost vomiting with fear. _Don't provoke him, Lex, for god's sake, don't provoke him!_

With a snarl of rage, Edge whipped up the gun and pointed it to his head. "Shut up!"

"Or what? You've gone to all this trouble abducting us, the both of us, to tell us your story. If you were going to shoot me, you would have alrea…"

The gun coughed.

Lex gave a cry of pain. His hand flew to his right shoulder, where suddenly a small hole began to bubble blood. Chloe gasped, would have clasped her fists to her mouth but the man holding her held her fast and she could only watch, her fingernails digging into her palms.

Edge began to laugh, a half-choked, hysterical bark of a laugh. The hand holding the gun shook as if struck with palsy, and his voice shook as well when he said, "Sorry about that, Lex. I was aiming for your arm. Well, I never claimed I was a sharp-shooter. My battlefield was always the court room—however, you beat me there, on my own ground. Really, you gave me no other choice but to take it to…to this."

Lex released his shoulder, drew himself up straight.

"You are going to _execute_ me?" he asked incredulously. "For killing your father in self-defense? He was trying to…"

He screamed again when Edge shot him in the thigh, tottered, would have gone down if he hadn't fallen back against a tree that could prop him up.

"Are you crazy!?" he gasped, his working arm clawing at the trunk to keep upright. "You can't do this! He tried to kill me, he would have run me over, he would have…"

This time Chloe's shriek was louder than any sound Lex made as Edge shot him through his other leg, and he collapsed onto his knees on the frozen ground.

Edge's teeth were chattering, his hand quivering, but he was still aiming the gun at Lex. "I'm sorry," he said, "were you saying anything? More lies? You're so good at lies. At covering up. Well, who's on his knees now, huh?"

Lex, taking the hint, said nothing. Or maybe he was trying not to pass out; he was hunched over his blood-soaked knees, wheezing for air.

"Please," Chloe begged, too terrified to even think coherently, knowing only that she had to say something to stop this madness, "Please don't do it. Please stop, please stop, please…" a big hand covered her mouth and she struggled, but she might just as well have been fighting one of those trees. The man wouldn't budge. When Edge began to talk again she subsided, afraid she'd miss something vital…like mercy. Or the opposite.

_Oh god Lex!_

He'd pushed himself up again, upper body rigidly straight, the wound in his shoulder bleeding freely, his right arm dangling, the hand of his left pressed hard against the wound in his thigh. His face was so white it reflected the car light like a second moon but he held it high, chin up, mouth twisted with pain but closed firmly. Lex Luthor did not beg for his life, most certainly not if talking only seemed to worsen the situation. If speaking had no effect, he'd die in silence.

Edge was chatting enough for both, anyway. He was almost babbling. "Do you know how many cases I filed against you? Do you? 18. Eighteen cases over two years, and your lawyers wiped the floor with every one of them. Ha, it's unbelievable! And it wasn't that I didn't have any evidence either—you're like a master magician, Lex. One moment, I have condemning evidence, the next moment, poof! It's useless! I don't know how you do it—you're good, I have to give you that." Casually, he aimed his gun again, and shot Lex in his left arm. Lex reeled, but by now he was either in so much pain that one more shot simply drowned in the whole of it, or his will power was so strong he actually forced himself to keep quiet.

"Five shots," Martin Edge said softly, his voice unsteady. "You shot five bullets into his chest. There were more wounds, but that was what killed him: five bullets in the chest. And you're telling me it was self-defense? You shot him five times in _self-defense_?" He laughed, wiped his forehead. His face was gleaming with sweat.

Lex was far too intelligent to taunt someone holding a gun to his head. Until the shot did not come, and Edge's hand started to shake so much the barrel hardly pointed at Lex anymore.

Chloe, waiting, tore her eyes away from Lex and gazed at Edge with the first stirrings of hope loosening the coil of fear in her stomach.

He couldn't do it. He couldn't kill the man who had killed his father in self-defense in cold blood.

Had their situations been reversed, Martin Edge would have found no hesitation whatsoever in Lex's eyes at all; if Lionel had been murdered by this man and Lex wanted to take care of revenge himself, his hand would have been as steady as a statue's.

His realization of this fact, and his amazement at Edge's faltering, Chloe could see playing briefly over Lex's bloodless face. The anticipation in her stomach turned to painful pangs of dread. Martin Edge was failing, and Lex reacted to failure like a shark to blood in the water. He couldn't help it. His whole life was Hamlet's question all twisted up: to fail or not to fail, and Lex Luthor did not fail. Ever. He had his weaknesses, certainly, but he was always perfect in his resolve. A tiny, contemptuous smile twisted the corners of his mouth.

Edge's hand steadied. His last shot, even silenced, broke the silence like an explosion.

"NO!" Chloe shrieked. Lex's head struck the tree and he slumped down, blood pouring down his face. A dark smudge of it glittered on the tree bark.

"Let's get out of here," Edge gagged.

The man holding Chloe protested. "We've got to check if he's…"

"Get out of here!"

"But the woman! And what if he isn't dead!"

"I just shot him through the goddamn head!" Edge snarled. He pressed his fist against his mouth, looking sick to his stomach. "If he isn't dead, he'll soon be. Let's go!"

"But the woman…"

"Leave her here. Let's GO!" Edge threw himself into the driver's seat and his accomplice, cursing, had no choice but to let Chloe go and hurriedly join him before Edge drove off on his own.

"I'm telling you, this is a mistake!" Chloe heard him shout, even as the car revved up and the engine howled, "If she gets back to…" But then the door slammed, his voice was cut off and Edge drove away, leaving skid marks on the frozen ground.

Chloe ran to where Lex was lying, stumbling over her own feet. She wasn't so much crying as expelling water; tears coursed down her cheeks in such quantities it was as if she'd sprung a leak.

"Lex," she cried. "Lex! Don't be dead. Don't be dead, please, don't be dead, don't be dead…" When she'd reached him, she was afraid to look, but she knew she had to. She had to see.

He was lying with his face, and the wound, turned away from her. Her hands were shaking so badly she didn't dare touch him; instead, she crawled around him…and found his eyes open. More tears, she almost choked on them. Her entire world looked like a swimming pool. She almost missed it when he blinked.

"Ch…"

She did not miss that. "Lex?"

He blinked again. A stream of blood ran into his right eye, forcing it closed, while the other was very wide—but he blinked.

"Chlo…e…"

She wanted to throw herself at him and hug him, but she didn't know how to do that without hurting him, so she hugged herself instead and settled for more tears, this time of relief, and a sobbing, "You're alive…god…I thought he'd shot you…"

A minimal twitch of his mouth made her stare in disbelief. "He…did. Five times."

"Would you stop JOKING about it!" she screeched. "I thought you were DEAD!"

"Luthors don't die…that easily." He painfully lifted his left arm and inched his fingers closer to the bloody mess on his face.

"Don't touch it!" Chloe grabbed his hand and gasped when he almost crushed her fingers. She squeezed back. The pain in her hand served to ground her, and it stopped the senseless flood of tears. Lex's hand was slick with blood. She couldn't see very well in the dark, but she thought there was a deep tear just above his eyebrow, then some sort of little tunnel under his skin, and another hole where the bullet had come out again. Both the gash and the holes were bleeding profusely, enough to paint half his face red and soak his shirt all the way to his shoulder, but not enough to kill him.

That left four other bullets to do the job.

She didn't even know where to start. _What should I do? What should I do? What am I going to do now?_

What did one do when one's friend was bleeding out in the middle of a freezing forest? The logical thing, she decided. Stop the bleeding. Cover him up. Christ, he wasn't even wearing a coat. Call for help…First things first, though. As best as she could she tried to assess the situation.

Four shot wounds, one in his shoulder (she didn't know how to stanch that, she just didn't.), one in his arm, just above his elbow (bleeding, but not so disturbingly as his head wound), one just above his left knee, and one in the middle of his right thigh. That one was _pumping_ blood. In a panic, she reached for her boot, for the mobile, for help, but even digging for the phone would take her too long—he'd have bled dry before she got through to anyone.

Chloe pulled off her jacket to spread it out over Lex's prone form—at least she tried to, but she had to ask Lex to release her hand. He was squeezing her fingers off.

"Lex, you've got to let go of my hand, I've got to get my coat off."

Lex made a tiny sound, more a puff of air than anything else. Only when she asked him again he relaxed his grip, and she quickly shrugged out of her coat and draped it over his chest. In reaction, he began to shiver, but she was quite sure she'd done the right thing. What to do to stop the bleeding? She pulled at her sweater, meaning to rip off a stroke to tie around his leg, but her 60 cotton 40 nylon resisted every force, no matter how hard she clawed at it. It was enough to drive a woman to tears, and so she cried some more, this time out of frustration.

"Wh-what are you doing?" Lex whispered.

"I'm trying to" tug "find something" tug "to keep you from" tug "bleeding to death!"

Lex's mouth did that unbelievable quirky thing again. How unreasonable of him to be amused when he was bleeding to death. His left hand scrabbled weakly at his throat.

"Use my tie. And you have…a hood, right? It should have…some kind of…_fuck_…cord in it." He closed his eyes.

"No no no no no! Don't close your eyes. You've got to keep conscious! Come on, Lex, open your eyes. Open your goddamn eyes or I swear, I'll punch you!" She all but ripped the tie from his neck and wrapped it around his leg, just under the wound.

Lex gave a breathy bark of laughter.

"Chloe…you've got to…tie it…_above_ the wound."

"I know that!" she snapped. "I KNOW that!" Her fingers shook so much she could hardly tie a knot.

"Tighter. It's got to AAAAaaaaaaaahh!"

"Sorry. Lex?" she wiped more tears from her face. She honestly hadn't thought she was such a crybaby. Lex was breathing in weird hitches and gasps, the white of his eyes showing. "Lex? You've got to stay with me here, honey."

Jesus. Her knees were getting wet and it was his fucking BLOOD that was soaking her tights.

"Lex? Wake up! Wake up, damn it, wake up!"

"I'm…'wake…" he panted. "That…really…fucking…hurt." He made a half-hearted move to wipe the blood from his eyes but couldn't get his hand raised further than his chin and let it fall back with a hiss. "Ow."

"_Ow_?" Chloe repeated incredulously. Then it occurred to her that she was wasting valuable time (and what else was he to say anyway? 'Give me more'?), and she ripped open her right boot. The flat little phone was wonderfully warm to the touch and the light of its display, as she turned it on, almost as encouraging as the lights of an ambulance. It was not the number of the ambulance her fingers typed out, though. There really was only one number she'd ever call in cases of emergency.

"Chloe." Clark's voice was very soft, "I am at a press conference of…"

"Clark. I'm…we're…" she took a deep breath. "I'm in a forest. With Lex. Someone kidnapped us—Martin Edge. He's Morgan Edge's son. And he's shot Lex." She looked at him. He had his head turned toward her, his one visible eye showing a very mild surprise and a great deal of pupil-dilated shock. In the phone's cold shine his skin was pasty white. "A lot."

"What? Wait." Superspeed sounded like static. "Ok, come again. I'm outside. This isn't some kind of joke?"

She almost laughed, but if she did, she'd burst into tears again, so she stopped herself. "No. No, Clark, this is not a joke. You've got to come and get us. Lex is…" She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. "He shot him five times, Clark. He's…he's alive, but he's bleeding all over the place and I don't know what to do!"

"Is that a phone?" Lex whispered in amazement. "Where d'you get that?"

"Christ." Wow, so even Clark could curse. Mama Kent would wash his mouth out with soap if she knew. "Ok, tell me where you are."

"I…" She didn't know. All she could think of was the feel of blood spraying against her hand. "I'm…we're in a forest. He picked us up in Metropolis, stuffed us in a car and drove to the south, I think. We took the freeway towards Smallville…"

"Route 4," Lex whispered. His teeth beat out a short staccato before he clenched his jaws together again.

"What?"

"Route 4," he repeated. "And we took the t-turn towards Deep Rock Vale. Entered the forest…just after that board about n-nature preservation." Again, he tried to rub the blood out of his eye, but let his arm fall back with a gasped curse. "Drove for about…an hour. I think."

"Did you get that?" Chloe asked Clark, even though she knew he had.

"Yes. I'm on my way. But…that's a big forest, Chlo. You could be anywhere. Keep talking, will you, so I can pick up your voice."

"Ok." Echoing emptiness in her head.

"Chloe. You've got to talk to me. I won't be able to find you if you don't talk."

"I know. I know." There was nothing she could think of, nothing to say but 'blood, god, there's so much of it!'. "What do you want me to talk about?"

"Hell, I don't know. Talk to Lex. Ask him how he feels. Just talk so I can hear your voice." His own voice was replaced by static.

"Ok." She put the phone down on the ground. "Ok."

Lex had his eyes closed again. A drop of blood in the corner of his mouth shone black in the phone's bluish light, and it sent her straight back into hysterics.

"Lex! Lex, are you ok? Are you awake? You've got to stay awake, Lex. Lex!"

"I'm awake. Calm down." He coughed, and the drop grew and rolled down his chin.

"Your…your mouth is bleeding." _What causes bleeding like that? Punctured lungs? Internal bleeding?_

"Is it?…Ah…" he opened his eye, the other was completely gummed shut with blood. A ghostly smile pulled at his lips. "It's alright," he whispered. "I just bit my t-tongue."

"How do you feel?" It was the stupidest question she'd ever asked, but there was simply nothing else she could think of.

Lex shot her a painful smirk. "C-could you be a little bit more…specific?"

"Chloe?" Clark's tinny voice spoke from her Nokia. "I can't hear you. Lex's voice is too low, your voice's higher. I need you to talk, either to him or to me."

"Yeah. Yeah, ok, I will." And she said the first thing that came into her head. "Lex. Lex, are you still with me? Which wound hurts most?"

Lex's eye, on the verge of closing, opened wide. "Is that a t-trick question?" he asked.

"No, it's a question designed to keep you conscious and alert," Chloe all but snapped. She wiped, very gently, with her sleeve at his blood-covered eye, but stopped when he gasped with pain. _Now would be a good time to be carrying baby-wipes. Then again, I'd probably have kept them in my purse. Phones, yes, but a whole package of baby-wipes probably won't fit into my boot._

"Let me think…about that for a while."

"Ok, that's fine." It wasn't, but what on earth was she to say otherwise? He was still bleeding, especially that wound just above his knee. Quickly, she kicked off her already open boot and began to remove her thigh high stocking. "So, shall I tell you about my shopping spree yesterday evening?" Clark wanted her to talk, fine, then she would talk. "I went to Macy's. It was really nice; there were a lot of people but none of those pesky small children that scream and terrorize the Santas. I spoke to one, I think his name was Terry. He said he'd be quite happy to go home and have a drink after a long day of playing Father Christmas."

She shivered at the cold air hitting her bare leg.

"Chloe…why are you taking off your sock?"

"It's not a sock," she said. "it's a thigh hi. There's a difference, you know." _Keep talking. Don't think about what it is you're doing, just keep talking._ She wrapped the thin fabric around Lex's thigh and told him to take a deep breath. Then she pulled, and tied it in a tight knot. Lex gasped and went limp.

"Lex? Lex, are you still with me? Lex?" She pressed two fingers into his neck. For one moment she felt nothing, and almost panicked before she realized that her icy fingers weren't touching his vein. She felt around for a moment, then laughed breathlessly. An irregular pulse was weakly pounding away beneath her fingertips. _Oh thank god…_

"Clark, I think he's lost consciousness." She was proud of herself. Her voice was as steady as if she were having coffee at the Tallon.

The phone stopped crackling. "What? Did you say something to me?"

"Lex is out." Ok, so maybe there was a tiny quiver in her voice. What could you expect after all the crying she'd been doing?

"Did you check his pulse? Keep talking to him, Chloe. I'll reach you soon, I'm sure of it. I just keep racing to and fro, and I should be able to pick up your voice real soon, just keep talking."

"Sure. Keep talking. No biggie." She unzipped her other boot and began to tug at her remaining stocking. "Nothing like talking to yourself while an evil befriended billionaire's irrigating the landscape with his aorta."

She tied her stocking around Lex's right bicep, wincing at the ice cold wetness of his sleeve. She was so cold her fingers were numb. "So, what can I use for his shoulder? Why didn't I bring my scarf, that would've been SO wise…Well, there's nothing for it." She put her hand against the wet spot on her own jacket and pressed hard. Her jacket _squelched_. "Jesus Christ, man, how much blood do you have in you anyway?" Another sob threatened, and she swallowed hard. "Ok. So, I was telling you about my Christmas Shopping. Do you want to know what I bought for Lois? Well, you probably don't, but I don't care. If you didn't want to know you shouldn't have lost consciousness.

'Are you anywhere near me yet, Clark? Because I'm getting really cold and Lex is staring to look like a cast member of _Sean of the Dead_.

'Ok, so don't answer me." She wiped her nose and ack!-ed as she spread blood all over her face. She scrubbed at the wetness with her sweater. "As if I care. Shopping. I bought her a hat. A really cute one, with blue feathers on it. And I bought her earrings in the shape of dogs—she'll love those. Heh.

'Are you awake yet, Lex? I'm pretty Remy all on my own, here. Umm…what more did I buy? Loads. Lots of candy, for the tree. Although I'm sure Mrs. Kent will have baked ten pounds of cookies and weighed down the tree with them…Then again, if Clark gets there before we do most of the cookies will be probably be gone, so I'm sure I can put in my sugar canes."

She took a deep breath. "Clark, if I scream for ten minutes, do you think you'll be able to find me?"

"…my shoulder."

She noticed the change in his breathing, which quickened and became more shallow, even before Lex spoke. Weak with relief, she leaned closer to his mouth. "I'm sorry?"

She pulled back when he moaned. "I think…" he wheezed, "my shoulder hurts most. Or maybe…my leg. Nope. Definitely…my shoulder. Do you have…have your fingers…dug inside or s-something?"

"No. I'm just pushing on it real hard. You know, to stop the bleeding?" He coughed, and she could swear she felt how much it hurt him. She knew his eyes were blue but at the moment his one open eye was like a black hole in his face. Another shot wound. The thought made her shudder. "Stay with me, Lex. Talk to me."

"…hurts."

And Lex sounding like a little boy was too wrong for words. "Don't talk to me like that," she chided, feeling the blood run warm and then cold between her fingers. "You'll make me cry, and I hate it when people make me cry. I know you're…"

"Gotcha," Clark's voice spoke up from the phone on the ground, and two seconds later he skidded to a halt next to her.

"Fuck," he said eloquently as he took in the scene in front of him.

"Clark," Lex gasped. He didn't even sound surprised. "You're too…late."

"What?" squeaked Clark. His fingers flew to Lex's neck to feel his pulse. Lex managed the faintest of smug smiles.

"You…usually you pluck the bullets out of the air…before they hit m-me. You must be getting…slow…"

"I should just leave you here," Clark hissed.

"Whoa, whoa!" Chloe cried. "Cut out the testosterone battle!" She jabbed a finger at Lex, who didn't react at all. "Lex! Be nice! And you," this to Clark, and feeling a guilty pleasure as he flinched, "He's just goading you. But he's bleeding out and we need to get moving FAST!"

"I can see that." Already, he'd forced his temper down, and Chloe could easily see why. Lex had made his trademark scathing remark, but by doing so he'd spent the last of his strength. His breath came shallow and halting, and even when Clark took off his jacket, retrieved Chloe's ("It's a bit blood-stained over here, but you should really put this back on; I'll just give him mine.") and very, very carefully wrapped it around Lex's upper body, Lex's eyes didn't focus on either of them. He shivered convulsively in between the moments that Clark removed Chloe's coat and covered him with his own, but when Chloe asked him whether he was ok he kept on staring into the distance, eyes half-closed, unresponsive.

Clark frowned with worry. "He's a mess, Chloe." He squinted at the various wounds, pulled her a little bit away from Lex. "There's two bullets still inside of him. Do you think I should burn them out?"

"I think we'd better let the hospital do that. We might only do more damage."

"Right. Did you call them yet? If they send the trauma helicopter to the forest road he can be hooked to an IV in ten minutes."

Chloe gaped at him. "If you run," she hissed, "he'll be on the operating table in five!"

"I don't want to be associated with him—I'm already connected to too many of these kinds of situations. If I take him…"

"Clark." She was shaking as much with anger as with cold now. "You know I would never, ever endanger your secret. And you know I'd be the first to agree that randomly rescuing people and frequently showing up to dump them at the hospital is really suspicious, _especially_ when those people are your former best friend and now arch-nemesis, not to mention infamous millionaires. But he's DYING!" She snatched up her phone from the ground. "There's a time for secrets and there's a time for making the right decision. I'll cover for you, if needs be. But you have to take him to the hospital, or I will n-never speak to you again, you got that!?"

Clark got it; he even had the decency to look embarrassed. Maybe it was that only half-swallowed sob at the end that made him agree—although, no. She had to give him credit where credit was due. He'd take Lex to the hospital because it was the Right Thing To Do.

He nodded. "Make your phone call, then. I picked you up by car."

"Yeah." She called 911 and summarized what happened. "No," she said, 'we don't need an ambulance. We're only a street or so away, it'll be quicker if we bring him ourselves. Just have everything prepared. He's…he's not doing so well." Breaking the connection, she shoved the phone into her coat pocket. "They're set. Let's go."

TBC


	15. Chapter 15

Fifteen: In which Clark does what Clark does best 

"Ok. Right." Clark bent down and slid his arms under Lex's shoulder and knees, then lifted him. Lex _shrieked_.

"No don't, don't don't don't don't don't!! Don't lift me, don't move me put me down put me down put me down!!!"

"Christ, put him down, put him down!" Chloe cried.

Clark hurriedly lowered him to the ground again, white to the gills. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Lex."

Lex had both eyes wide open now, his right awash with red, the other black with shock. He was hyperventilating with pain. "Don't move me," he gasped. "Don't move me. Don't touch me."

"I'm sorry. I have to." Clark reached out his hands again, but Lex's eyes widened alarmingly.

"No. No. No, no, no no no no no…"

"Look, you don't have a choice, here. If we don't take you to the hospital you're going to die, man. It's only a short while to my car, ok?" He put those freakishly big, warm hands on either side of Lex's face, bending his fingers to keep well away from his shot wound, and forced Lex to look at him. "Lex. Look at me. No, look at me." Slowly, the swollen pupils focused on his face. "Yes, I was slow, this time, and I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry you got hurt. But I saved your life once, and I'm going to save it again, now, whether you want me or not. If you're in too much pain I can knock you out, but you're coming with me, and you're coming with me now. Ok?"

For long moments, Lex just stared at him, shaking and panting, more like a wounded animal than anything else…but finally he gave a faint nod, and whispered, "Ok. Ok." Clark was really good with animals.

"It's just a few minutes. We'll have you safe at the hospital in a…in a flash. Just hold on, ok?"

"Ok," repeated Lex. "Ok." He winced as Clark arranged both his arms over his chest to keep them from dangling when he picked him up. "Ok."

"Right," said Clark. "Here we go." He lifted him slowly, carefully, as gently as he would a kitten. Lex made a high, whining sound deep in his throat that grew progressively higher and louder as his body left the ground.

"Oh god, Clark, put him down!" Chloe pleaded, putting her hands over her ears. Then the sound stopped. She looked up.

"He's out again," Clark said. "Don't worry, it's probably for the better. I'd have knocked him out otherwise." He repositioned Lex in his arms and turned his back to Chloe. "Hop on, I need both my arms to carry him. You can put your arms around my neck."

She took a leap and landed halfway piggy-back, then climbed her way up until she could wrap her elbows around his neck and her legs around his ribs.

"You can hold on tighter, I won't choke," Clark urged. "I'm going to go really fast, and I don't want to lose you somewhere at 800 miles an hour."

She giggled faintly. "Mister Positive."

"Just being practical. I wouldn't be much of a hero if my damsels in distress ended up in a broken heap on the sidewalk, now would I? Are you ready?"

"Yeah." She tightened her hold. "Hi ho Silver."

Clark snorted and went off like a bullet.

Of course, Lex wouldn't be Lex if, instead of remaining unconscious like anyone else who'd been shot five times, he hadn't woken up just as they shot out of the forest. Chloe, clinging to Clark's back like a koala, couldn't see him but she heard him when he whispered, "We're going tremendously fast, aren't we? I mean…the trees are positively… blurring by." His voice was oddly distant.

Clark slowed down a little; not halfway enough to reach a normal pace, but enough to stop the wind his speed generated from howling and make conversation possible. Chloe used the respite to wrap herself more securely around his shoulders. "No, we're not," he said gently. "I'm just running. You're delirious."

"Whenever I see the truth, people say I'm delirious." Lex muttered.

"We've almost reached my car, Lex," Clark said evasively as he sped down route 4 towards Metropolis.

Chloe waited for the retort, but Lex either lacked the strength to reply or he was out cold again; whatever the case, Clark increased his pace and the wind resumed its whistling in Chloe's ears. Something cold and wet was creeping up from her knees where they were locked around Clark's waist, creating an icy trail on the inside of her thighs. She really didn't want to think about what it could be. Closing her eyes, she pressed her face against Clark's warm back and concentrated on holding on.

It only seemed a few seconds before he started to slow down again. She whimpered and pressed herself closer.

"Chloe." Clark's voice was strained. His feet pattered on pavement, then stopped altogether. "We're here. Get off. The hospital is one street away; you've got to walk the last bit." He swallowed. "And you'd better hurry because his heartbeat is acting funny."

She dropped to the ground and cursed when a jolt ran through her feet. "Ow. Ow, ow ow!"

"Are you alright?"

"Yah." She did a little dance of agony. Who needed bullets if simply landing could cause such PAIN? "You go on ahead, I'm right behind you."

He did start ahead. He was almost running—normal speed, this time. After the ten seconds she needed to kick the pain out of her soles Chloe followed him at a lumbering dead-run—she'd grown stiff with cold in the forest and on Clark's back—and caught up with him just as he dashed into the bright light shining from the hospital drive way.

And then she stopped, right in the middle of the road.

Because in the dark, she hadn't been able to see what it _looked_ like.

Oh my god…ohmigod how's he going to survive that!? 

Lex was _soaked_ in blood, it was like that scene in _Reservoir Dogs_, only worse, because he was completely _covered_ in it. A trail of red drops lead to where Clark handed over Lex's limp form to a herd of gurney-toting medical personnel…and he was covered in it as well. He wore a white dress shirt and the front of it was red from collar to pants. So were his arms, up to the elbows. Then she looked down on herself, and now she knew what the wetness on her legs was. Blood. It had run through Clark's shirt along his sides and all the way up her thighs. She'd thought her coat was only stained in one place, but she looked as if she'd been shot herself. Her hands were sticky with blood as well. She wiped them on her jacket to no avail; Lex's blood stuck to her skin as if it had been branded in…and suddenly her stomach revolted, the world began to spin and she fell to her knees, retching. All she'd had this day was melon and coffee and bagel and more coffee and apple pie and wine, and it all came out in five agonizingly painful, wracking heaves.

"Chloe! Chloe, are you alright?" Warm hands on her shoulders, warm fingers brushing her hair out of her face. She vomited again. "I think she's in shock, or something. Can you give me that…thank you."

A blanket wrapped tightly around her shoulders. She'd begun to cry again, too, to make things perfect. Snot and bile and tears dripped down her face; she spat, disgusted with herself but unable to stop. Her stomach hurt. Her head hurt. And she was cold, colder than she'd been without a coat in the forest. She was dislodging her own jaws with the force of her teeth's chattering.

"Chloe? Chloe, say something. No, stay back, I'll carry her. She isn't hurt." Clark picked her up, unmindful of the gunk on her face, and quickly carried her into the light and the warmth. "It's alright," he said, stroking her hair back from her damp face with a blood-stained finger. "You're safe now. You're safe. And so is he. It's ok, everything's fine now."

"Put her down here," another voice said—a woman's voice. Chloe irrationally clutched at Clark's arm. He simply sat and pulled her down on his lap. "I need another blanket. And a cup of tea. Hot tea, lot's of sugar."

"C-coffee," Chloe managed through stiff, vomit, snot and tear-coated lips. "No tea. Coffee."

"That's it, dear." A female hand pushed a wad of tissues into her face. "Here you go, dear, clean yourself up a bit. God bless, but you're such a mess…Are you sure she isn't hurt?"

"Absolutely," Clark replied.

"I'd like to check her over anyway." She shone a painful light in Chloe's eyes, testing her pupil reflexes.

Chloe winced. "Ow!" She pulled away and blew her nose, wiped her eyes and her chin. Her stomach still felt tender, but that crippling pain had faded, and her headache began to clear as well. _That was an ordinary panic attack, you stupid girl!_ she reproved herself. _And way AFTER it was logical to have one, too!_

Noticing she was still sitting on Clark's knees, she hastily wriggled away until her legs hit the wood of the bench. "I'm fine," she said hoarsely. "He's right, I'm ok. I just…kinda freaked. I'm really fine, really." _If I am so fine,_ she thought, _why am I shaking like this?_ She could hardly bring a plastic cup of water to her mouth because her fingers were quivering so badly. Water sloshed down her front—but hey, she was soaked anyway, so who gave a damn? When she'd taken a few swallows her stomach stopped cramping and the shakes subsided somewhat, even if her hands were still unsteady.

The nurse, or whoever she was, eyed the freshly delivered mug of hot coffee doubtfully. Chloe stretched out her hands toward it as if it was the holy sacrament and she was a repenting sinner.

"I don't want you to burn yourself, Honey."

"I won't," she said confidently. She really must be in a bad way if hospital coffee started to smell like heaven in crockery.

"Just give it to her," Clark said, indulging the junkie's cravings. "She'll be fine."

Anchored to earth by the java, Chloe finally began to take notice of her surroundings. Lex was gone, whisked away to the O.R., she guessed. A whole bunch of people were hovering in a ten-foot radius, held at a distance by the glowering nurse; policemen, she thought, and even a photographer, who was patting his camera with a self-satisfied look on his face. He probably got a nice picture of bloody millionaire, secured himself a spot on the front page of the Monday morning edition. Chloe felt a rush of anger, but it faded quickly. After all, she was a journalist herself. Journalists live off blood, scandals and suffering. She took a gulp of coffee. It burned in her throat, but it created a wonderful pocket of heat in her stomach.

Clark had gotten a cup as well; he held it in both hands, as if to warm himself although she could feel his body heat from where their shoulders were touching. Clark, she discovered, looked pretty shaken himself. She nudged him. "How are you yourself? You ok?"

He nodded. Shook his head, gave her a lopsided smile and nodded again. "Yeah…Just… That was a lot of blood." The smile dropped. "It's…I don't know. You know," he resumed, "I get it when people want revenge. I understand how it can make you feel. And I can imagine someone would want to kill Lex…I mean, you might even say he had it coming. But like this? I'd understand it if someone shot him, on the street, or in his house, or…wherever. I wouldn't condone it, but I'd _understand_. But this? This is…this is barbaric! It's like the modern version of…of quartering! God damn it!" His voice wavered; she was surprised and shocked to see how close to tears he was. "How can you do that to someone?"

"He studied Lex," Chloe said softly. "He was a lawyer. I think, in the end, he didn't see another way to…"

"But that's even worse!" Clark exclaimed, then quickly hushed his voice. "I know what he's done," he continued in an undertone. "I know him! I hate him. I know what he's capable of, and if I have to, I'll stop him. But I could never, ever kill him! How can you kill Lex if you know him?"

_How interesting, _Chloe thought, as she made a non-committal sound and sipped her coffee. _So there still is something of that old friendship left._ She understood, though. Both Clark and Edge. She probably knew Lex better than either of them—she hoped so, anyway. At least he'd been more intimate with her than with either of them, unless Lex had been hitting the sack with a lot more various crowd than she'd been aware of.

She knew why someone like Clark would never be able to kill Lex: Lex was brilliant. The man's mental _and_ financial resources were enormous, and therefore his potential for good was near limitless. Unfortunately, so was his potential for evil. Since Lex had trouble determining the difference, (and Chloe was becoming more and more convinced that he sometimes really didn't understand why protesters screamed he was the antichrist and demanded his head on a silver plate) having him around was a bit like playing tennis with a hand grenade for someone like Clark. He knew that Lex might go off at any given moment, destroying everything he cared for…but he also knew that if he stopped playing altogether, or shut away the grenade in a lead box, he'd also end the opportunity for the most spectacular match on earth. So far, Clark had been hit in the face by the grenade, he'd skinned his metaphysical knees, fallen and cursed at it, but he'd been as mesmerized by the whole game as Chloe. If you threw the grenade up high enough in the air, it glittered in the rays of the sun

And that, Chloe, though, was really as far as she wanted to take that particular metaphor. And it wasn't even a very good metaphor. The real reason why Clark would never kill or even hurt Lex (apart from the odd broken arm or black eye) was because they used to be friends, and Clark wasn't the kind of man to do such a thing.

Now Edge…Oh, she understood him as well. She could wholly imagine taking a gun in hand and deciding to be judge, jury and executioner if your holy cause only yielded victims instead of victories. In a way, she even felt some sympathy for the man. She'd been trying to catch Lex and LuthorCorp breaking the law forever. Becoming friends with Lex (lovers? No, that was not the correct term) had taken away her zeal and urgency, but she remembered that when she was still editor of the Torch, she'd spent many frustrated evenings digging for evidence and never finding it.

"Let alone trying to take revenge through it," she murmured aloud. "I can see how that would drive you mad." She looked up as Clark gave her a little push. The nurse had given up on her pit bull mentality and let through one single policeman. Chloe knew him by face, although she couldn't for the world remember his name. He swiftly remedied that by introducing himself.

"Miss Sullivan, Mister Kent. I am Chief-Inspector Jason Weatherbie. I'd like to ask you a few questions concerning the, uh, kidnapping."

"Only if you're up to it," the nurse said to Chloe, which earned her an annoyed look from the Chief-Inspector.

Chloe smiled. "That's alright. I'm fine now." She put her mug down, then picked it back up, needing something in her hands to fiddle with and perhaps hide behind when she started lying about Clark's rescue. "What would you like to know? Shall I just start at the beginning?"

"Please," Weatherbie said. "But first, is there anything you can remember about this Morgan Edge character, or about his, uh, car?" He glared at the nurse. "We want to catch him before he leaves the country, but were…hampered…trying to get your statement."

"This young lady is in shock!" the nurse bristled back. "She shouldn't be hounded for answers by the police! Hasn't it been horrible enough for her to witness such a monstrous act of violence?"

"We would like to catch the person responsible for this monstrous act of violence," Weatherbie snapped. "And for that purpose we need all the information we can get, Miss Halen!"

"It's Mrs.!" snarled the nurse.

"Uh," said Chloe, raising her hand, "shall I give you my verbal statement, then? Or would you rather I come to the station?"

"No, Miss Sullivan, that won't be necessary," Weatherbie pulled away from Mrs. Halen's fizzling indignation. "I'd only like to get the basic facts, so we can start on a road block and a search. So, Edge's car?"

Chloe frowned. She hadn't paid all that much attention to the car. _Lex'd know, _she thought. _He always seems to notice everything._ "It was black," she started, thinking hard. Weatherbie wrote something down on his note pad. If he had to write down that the car was black she wondered under whose desk he'd crawled to become a Chief-Inspector.

_Focus, girl._

"A four-wheel drive," she remembered suddenly. "It was a Land Rover, yes, definitely a Land Rover. Series 3. Gray interior, with…" she closed her eyes, remembering tugging at the safety belt, visualizing the car in her mind's eye. "…with red squares on it. It smelled of pine, a very distinctive smell—like one of those tree-shaped air refreshers. Maybe he had one hanging from his mirror?" She concentrated, but nothing else popped up. "That's all, I'm afraid. I don't recall the license plate…Oh, no! It isn't. His back seat was all redone, like a limo, with an extra seat facing the back seat, if you understand what I mean."

"I do," Weatherbie said, scribbling fast. He looked up and gave her a sincere, warm smile from under a graying moustache. "That's quite impressive, Miss. Now, can you give me a quick description of Mister Edge?"

That was easy. "Non-descript. That's what's really remarkable about him, that he's unremarkable. Dark blond hair. I think he's medium height. Blue eyes. His eye lashes are very light, and so are his eyebrows, but not remarkably so. I mean, he doesn't stick out. Um…I think he wore black jeans, and a blue coat, but I can't remember very well. He had someone else with him as well, but I couldn't see him. He had…he put…" A short, cold sliver of fear sliced through her like a knife. Clark put his arm around her shoulder, squeezed her upper arm. "He put a gun to my back," she whispered. "And he held my arms while Edge shot…" She trailed off, took a gulp of now tepid coffee. God, it tasted awful!

"That's all right, Miss," the Chief-Inspector assured her. "One moment, please." He half-turned away, speaking in staccato into a cell phone. Chloe checked her watch, and almost fell over with surprise. It was only seven o' clock. How was that possible? When she'd got up to go and save her laundry—the dryer! Oh…well…fuck the dryer and fuck her clothes as well—it had been almost five-thirty. Maybe a little earlier. Lex had said that Edge had driven around for about an hour, so…Was it only an hour ago since he'd been shot? They had been at the hospital for almost twenty minutes now, so Clark had found them and taken them back to Metropolis in a little more than ten minutes? She thought it had taken him hours…

"Miss Sullivan? Can you go on?"

"Yeah." She started. "Sure."

"You don't need to recount the entire incident. I'm aware that must be quite, uh, stressful for you," he cast a sideward glance at nurse Halen, who huffed silently.

Chloe felt a grin pull at her mouth. She took another sip of coffee. Ugh.

"I'd just like you to tell me what happened after Mister Luthor was, uh, shot."

That little 'uh' was starting to severely annoy her. She nodded. "I. I put my cell phone into my boot. When they hustled us into the car; I had it in my hand and it fit into my boot. When Lex…when Mister Luthor…When they went away, I took it out and called Clark. He happened to be in the neighborhood. He picked us up with his car. Lex knew where we were, somehow." She cast her eyes down, striving for True Emotion. It was surprisingly easy to achieve. "He's very observant, Lex."

Weatherbie nodded. "A lucky thing that he was," he said with a hint of irony that Chloe thought inappropriate. "But, uh, Miss Sullivan. Why did you call Mr Kent, instead of the police? Wouldn't that have been a more, uh, logical thing to do?"

"Panic, I guess," Chloe said calmly. "We're childhood friends. He was the name that was still selected in my phonebook."

"I see. Mister Kent," Clark sat up straight and faced the moustache. The Chief-Inspector shot him a short glance before looking back on his note pad. "Your record for saving people is quite, uh, impressive. Still, could you clarify one thing for me?"

"Hm?" Clark ummed questioningly.

"How did you find them?"

"GPS," Clark said with a wry smile.

Chloe almost laughed. Yes, her phone had GPS. They could have used it—it would have been useful. Might have saved them a few minutes—not that many, but still…she hadn't thought of that at all. Silly Chloe. Dumb girl.

Again, Weatherbie was quite impressed. Chloe was not very impressed with him. However, the one good thing about talking to him was that she now felt significantly calmer, and also icky and disgusting in her blood-soaked clothes. Her stomach still twisted, but she was reasonably sure those feelings could be attributed to hunger pangs. Now her first shock had past, she was famished. All she wanted was to go home, have long, hot shower, and eat large quantities of mac and cheese, or spaghetti Bologn...

Oh god, spaghetti.

All appetite left her; the coffee felt like acid. Clark seemed to notice she wasn't feeling well; he took on his usual guard dog position.

"Are we finished? I'd like to take Chloe home so she can change her clothes and get something to eat." His own stomach rumbled loud enough to make the police officer snicker.

"Sure, Son," he said. "Just give me your phone number so I can reach you if I need to speak to you again."

Clark occupied himself with personal data. Chloe quietly stood up from the bench and drifted over to the information desk, where nurse Halen sat filling in forms.

"Excuse me?"

She looked up. "Oh, it's you, dear. What can I do for you?"

"I…I was wondering how Lex…How Mister Luthor is doing."

"He's still in surgery." She shook her head. "Poor thing. That's twice in a row on Christmas."

"_What_?" _What the hell? Twice? He was shot before, on Christmas? When? Last year? I didn't know about that?_

Reddening, Mrs. Halen shook her head. "Nothing. Eh, I don't know when he'll be out. It might take a while, with all those…Well. I'm sure he'll be alright, though," she finished optimistically.

"Could you let me know when he comes out?" Chloe asked, still chewing on that 'twice in a row on Christmas' comment, but willing to drop it until a more suitable time presented itself.

"Are you his next of kin?"

"No," Chloe said, swallowing a 'duh!'. "But I was with him when he was, you know, kidnapped. And he's one of my best friends. I just want to know if he's ok. Or…or if he isn't." She swallowed, and sternly forbade herself to shed another useless tear. No sense crying before the bear was dead. No, that wasn't how the saying went. "I just want to know he's ok," she repeated.

Nurse Halen kept shaking her head. "I don't have permission to call people other than his next of kin; his father's been notified, but that's all I…But you can always come by, of course," she said with what looked suspiciously like a wink. "I can let you see him, if I'm still on duty. I'm sure I can make an exception for you. Just come by later, dear. In an hour or so. Get yourself some nice, clean clothes and a hot meal. You'll see, it'll all turn out just fine."

Chloe nodded. "Ok." She put the mug on the counter. "Thanks for the coffee. I'll be back later, then."

"See you later, dear."

Clark had just finished giving the policeman his desired information; Chloe just gave him her card, she had oodles of them in her front coat pocket. Unfortunately, she could now throw most of them away since her fingers had left rust-colored smudges just below the Daily Planet logo. "Shall we go?" Clark asked.

She nodded. "But I need to come back later."

"Come back? But you must be exhausted."

"I need to know…"

"Ok." He smiled, nudged her towards the door. She shivered when it opened and cold wind hit her clammy knees. "I understand. He'll be fine, though. He always is." But even as he said it the conviction left his voice, and she knew he remembered the staggering amount of blood. Clark rubbed his chest. He had taken off his blood-soaked shirt (to the delight of a few passing nurses) and now held it bunched up in his hand. His red jacket didn't show the blood quite as badly.

"From this?" Her nose prickled, but thankfully her blubbering spell had passed.

"Of course." He'd taken on the slouch with drawn up shoulders he usually adopted when walking next to her. Probably so she didn't have to look up so far. "Lex's like a cockroach. He'll survive anything. He's a meteor freak, after all."

"I'm not so sure, this time." She looked around her, but no people were around. "He doesn't have his healing power anymore."

Clark frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I'm saying." She sighed. Clark had the right to know—maybe he even HAD to know. "Do you know anything about the Cradle Cancer children?"

"Just a little. I'm guessing you're going to tell me about it. Wait one moment, though. I'll take us to my car—we'll need it later, in case the police want to search it for traces of blood."

"Why could they possibly want to search _your_ car? You're not a suspect!"

"No," Clark said. "But I've been involved with police cases too often to let anything depend on fate. I'd like to diminish the huge amount of unlikely little facts. I was never in the forest, at least my car wasn't. And Lex was never in my car, either. If people remember I was at the conference…"

"Ok. Fine." She suddenly felt very tired. Clark was doubtlessly right, she just didn't get it at the moment. All she wanted was that shower.

"We'll be there in a few minutes," he assured her, picking her up with an efficiency that took away any romantic notion. "And then you can tell me about the inhabitants of LuthorCare."

By the time she'd finished her story, they had almost reached her apartment.

"Let me get this straight," Clark said, absentmindedly picking at a dent in his steering wheel. Chloe wasn't sure, but the dent, or rather dents, looked as if someone had tried to take a bite from the wheel. With human teeth. "This girl that has disappeared, the girl we're all looking for, Amy, she's a medicine-made meteor freak that has the ability to make other meteor freaks normal. And this ability has nullified the cure LuthorCare has made, which is based on Lex's healing factor and Kryptonite. The reason why those kids let her do that, was because the cure made them bald. And now they're dying because there's no other cure available."

"Yep," Chloe said. "That pretty much sums it up."

"And Lex let her unfreak him too? I never thought he'd be that vain. Although…"

She chuckled. "Oh, believe me, Lex wasn't planning on growing hair and losing his edge." She grimaced at her poorly chosen words. "The moment he found out he'd gained stubble and no longer had, well, whatever his freakiness entails exactly, he wanted to run back and make her undo it. But I stopped him. I told him he'd be a coward if he didn't at least try being normal for a while." She shot Clark a humorless grin. "And now he has loads of hair and no blood, and no healing factor."

"It's not your fault." Words repeated to him by his parents, Chloe herself, everybody he knew so often that they rolled from his lips automatically. "You're not to blame, Chloe."

"I know that," she said. "But that doesn't stop me from feeling guilty as hell. And that's not going to help anyone either, but hey, that's female nature to you."

"So," Clark parked with a skillfulness found only in men. "What you're saying is that we're not only looking for this Amy girl to save her, but also to make sure she re-freaks Lex and thereby saves _his_ life?"

"Yeah. Maybe. I don't know." She extricated herself from the car. "I'm hoping he'll do fine on his own. But if he can't…yes."

"Great," Clark muttered, but there wasn't much force behind it. Chloe suspected he was only keeping up appearances, if only for himself. Clark had decided that his friendship with Lex was over and done with; being confronted with that ex-friend with most of his blood on the outside had probably upset the balance of his carefully constructed feelings. Poor Clark. It was very hard to hate someone when you could hear their heartbeat falter.

She shivered. "Thanks for taking me home, Clark."

"That's ok," he said. "I'll pick you up for dinner in half an hour, ok?"

"Dinner?" she said weakly. She'd forgotten all about food.

"Yes," Clark said firmly. "Dinner. You need to eat, and you shouldn't be alone. We'll go to that small restaurant over there," he gestured vaguely to the other side of the road, "have a quick bite, and then I'm taking you back to the hospital so you can check on Lex. If we don't eat quite so quickly, he'll probably be out of the operating room by then. And after you've checked up on him and seen that he's being his usual cockroach self, I'll take you home so you can be in bed by eleven. I'm sure you're totally exhausted."

Every time she thought Clark had a petty streak in him, he proved that he was, in fact, the sweetest guy on the planet. A slow, grateful, wobbly smile gradually gained wattage as she studied his anxious face.

"Is that ok with you?"

"It's perfect," she said, and damn it to hell if she was going to blubber again. "Thanks. Thanks a lot. But what about you? Don't you want to have a shower? You can hardly sit in a restaurant in just your bloody jeans."

"The waitress won't mind," Clark said with a grin. He was spending way too much time with Lois. "Nah," he continued. "I'll just run home, wash up there, grab some clothes and come back to your place. Is half an hour enough time for you to do your thing?"

She smiled. "I think I can manage. Thanks again, Clark."

"Don't mention it," he said briskly, and gave her a gentle shove towards her door. "Do you still have your keys? Yes? Good. I'll be back at eight." And off went prince charming, into the night. Chloe entered the building, dragged herself up the stairs, and stood under the hot shower for twenty minutes until the water ran clear. She pulled her clothes from the dryer and tossed them onto her bed, not even checking them for the rot she'd been so afraid of a lifetime ago.

When Clark picked her up ten minutes later, she was wearing jeans and sneakers and an old, soft, big sweater that wrapped around her like a towel. For some reason she couldn't bear to put on boots. Ungrateful, after they'd been so helpful, but she couldn't make herself wear even the most comfortable pair.

Clark didn't seem to notice. He asked her if she was still up to leaving her flat, because he'd understand if she wanted to stay in. Chloe replied that she'd love to go and have dinner with him if he wasn't put off by the wrinkled wretch without make-up. Clark said he didn't care about her water wrinkles and that he'd never understood the use of make up anyway. Before she knew it, they were at the restaurant and had ordered burgers.

Lana must be somewhere safe, because Clark never checked his watch, nor his phone, nor the TV for the entire time they were sitting there. "Shouldn't you call Lois?" he asked, once, but asked no further when Chloe stuffed her mouth with fries and only shook her head.

She didn't want to talk to Lois, get a portion of Mother-Henning, Lane-style. Also, she was tired of defending Lex, and if she called Lois to inform her—god. She looked at the TV, playing soundlessly in the far corner. Baseball. No news.

"It hasn't been on the news, yet," Clark said, instantly knowing what she was thinking. "I checked, at home. But it will be, and she'll want to know whether you're ok."

"I still have my Nokia," Chloe said. "Not here. It's on the sink." She sighed. "I'll call her later." She rubbed her eyes, that had been so thoroughly pickled today. Eye gherkins. The new rage.

"Are you really ok?"

"Would you stop asking me that?" she smiled to take the sting out of her words. "Yeah, I'm fine. I'm just tired. Busy day, you know—Oh, Clark! Copy machine harasser's press conference! I'm so sorry! I totally forgot…"

"Don't worry about it," Clark said airily. "I got a fair bit of it, anyway, and I'm sure that nobody's all that interested in Dempsey anyway. Not with this whole business with Lex, anyway," he added morosely. "It's good you left your phone at home. I'm sure everybody's going to call you flat when they find out you were involved."

Now that was a sobering thought. She moaned just thinking about giving yet another statement. Then she brightened. "Lionel won't have it. You can be sure he's given both the police and Perry a preventive tongue lashing just to make sure no one knows about it. By the time people have put my name to Lex's kidnapping it'll be Christmas, and I'll be unavailable."

For the very first time she was happy with the outrageous amount of influence Lionel Luthor wielded over the city. She yawned. Without noticing, she'd polished off most of the burger and all of the fries, she was warm and full and safe, and if she didn't watch out she was going to fall asleep right at this table.

"If you're tired, I can go to the hospital for you, see how Lex is doing," Clark offered. "I wouldn't mind, and you look ready to dip your nose in your ketchup."

"Nah. I'm fine. I think it'll be therapeutic. You know, get the memory of it out of my mind, replace it with something a little more soothing." _The sound of five silenced shots. That man's hands digging into my arms. Lex bleeding to death on the forest ground. And the way he screamed when you picked him up. And that…trail…you left when you carried him up to the hospital._

"Yeah…" Clark murmured. He put up his hand for the check. "C'mon, then. I'll take you."

Nurse Halen was still on duty when they walked into the entry hall. Clark sat down on one of the First Aid waiting chairs. "You go ahead. I'll wait for you here."

Chloe strode up to the desk. "Hi," she said. "It's me again. Chloe Sullivan. I'm here for Lex."

Nurse Halen nodded in recognition. "You look a lot better, dear. And yes, before you ask, he's out of surgery."

A sliver of fear turned the burger in her stomach. "Is he alright?"

The nurse smiled encouragingly. "I believe so." She leaned forward and said in an undertone, "But you can see for yourself. He's on the fifth floor, room 512."

"Not on observatory?" She was surprised. The way he'd looked, she thought they'd at least hook him up to five hundred machines and keep him behind glass.

"No, dear," Mrs. Halen said. "He's in a recovery room. I believe he'll be quite fine. If you're quick, you might be able to see him before they move him to a more permanent room."

"So I can talk to him?" That was what recovery rooms were for, right? Patients to recover from sedation?

The nurse pursed her lips. "I doubt it," she said. "Dr. Scanlan said he was going to keep him sedated for some time. But you better hurry, dear. And just a quick peek, you hear? And don't tell anyone I told you his room number."

"Right," Chloe smiled, and got a conspiratory smile back. She set off for the elevator.

The fifth floor was uncomfortably empty. A single doctor paced the linoleum floors, one or two nurses ran to and fro, three silent, distraught family members sat waiting in the hallway. However, no one took any notice of her. Room 512 was around the corner, behind a separate glass wall. Chloe half and half expected she'd have to steal a white coat to be able to enter, but apart from that one doctor, who cast a fleeting glance her way and then dismissed her, no one seemed to care.

Bolstered by the cheerful demeanor of nurse Halen, Chloe entered the room with only a minor amount of trepidation speeding her heart. But when she saw him lying there, and heard that ominous beeping sound, it was as if her feet turned to lead.

He looked dead.

The cardio thingy proved her wrong with its irritating pulse, and if she looked hard she could see his chest go up and down as he breathed, but still she had to move closer to the bed and put her hand against his cheek to check if he wasn't dead cold.

He wasn't. He was cool, as usual, but not in an unhealthy way—not like he'd been in the forest.

_It must be the lighting,_ she thought, studying his face. A big, square bandage covered the wound on his temple. But she didn't think that bad lighting could cause purplish shadows like that, under someone's eyes, jaws and cheek bones, nor bleach a man's skin from all healthy color and leave it such a horrible grayish white. He had IVs feeding into him from all sides; bags of blood, bags of plasma, bags of things she couldn't even pronounce.

"One spilled cup of coffee can soak your entire skirt," she told herself. "Women menstruate about one glass of blood during the total length of their period." She remembered the trickle on the inside of her thighs and grimaced. They weren't talking about cups or glasses here. This was more in the length of carafes and pitchers.

She sighed. "At least we were in time," she told him. "You're safe, and apparently you're doing better than you look. You'll see, you…" She cut herself off, froze, listened.

Lionel Luthor's distinctive poisonous drawl sounded loud and clear from the hallway. "The last time I was here for a similar occurrence I found you lacking the nerve to give my son the proper treatment. The only thing I want to hear from you is whether I should have him moved again, or that he will completely recover. That is all. A very simple question."

_Oh my god. He's going to find me here. I can't get out. _Her eyes flicked around the room, searching for an extra door, a place to hide. There was no door. _If he finds me here he'll be so mad! _The room could hold two patients; it was separated by a drawn-back curtain that almost reached to the ground. The lights in that part of the room were off, casting the corners into shadow.

"Your son will be fine," another voice replied—a doctor, Chloe assumed. He sounded about as nervous as she felt. "We have removed the bullets, sutured the tear in his femoral vein and repaired any additional tissue damage. But he has lost a dangerous amount of blood. He will recover, in my opinion completely, but…"

"But?" She could see his shadow on the floor.

"It may take some time," the doctor finished lamely. Lex could be pretty scary if he tried; Lionel didn't even have to try. He could flay people raw with the intonation of his voice alone. Bravely, the doctor plowed along. "When he was brought in he was dangerously close to hypothermia, and that combined with the blood loss…"

"What, Doctor Scanlan, are you trying to say?" Lionel asked. His shadow crossed its arms over its chest. "Precisely?"

"He's very weak," the other man returned. "And he'll be in a lot of pain for the next few days. I'd like to keep him sedated over the next couple of days. He needs his rest, and it will…"

"No," Lionel interrupted him. "Lex heals very fast, as you doubtlessly remember. It will be unnecessary to keep him under. If you claim he'll recover completely, he'll be out of this place in two, three days. Keeping him sedated won't speed up his recovery."

"Mister Luthor…"

"I know my son, Doctor."

If Chloe were the doctor, she'd be running away so fast she'd leave her shoes. She ducked behind the curtain next to the door, where the shadows were deepest, quietly rolled a movable bed table, one of those trolley/box-like things, in front of her and hoped Lionel wouldn't notice her.

He continued in that same cold, flat tone, "Lex won't thank you if you keep him asleep. Besides, tranquilizers do not effect him in the same way as normal people and my son, as you know, is far from normal."

"But mister Luthor…"

"I would like to see my son, now," Lionel snapped. "In private. Thank you, Doctor." His shadow uncrossed its arms and came into the room, while the doctor's footsteps departed. Chloe crawled further into her hiding place, making herself as small as possible behind the table and the curtain.

Lionel walked up to Lex's bed, his back towards her. She peeked around the side of the table. Lionel's figure was reflected perfectly in the window. She could also see the outline of Lex's profile, white and still on the pillow.

"Lex." Lionel leaned over him, his voice soft. "Lex, wake up. I know you're not asleep."

Lex didn't move.

"Come on, Son, open your eyes. I know the anesthetic must have worn off, you were never affected by narcotics for long." When Lex still did not reply, Lionel sat down on the edge of his bed, keeping his head close to his son's. Chloe listened carefully. When he spoke again, she could still hear every word if she strained her ears.

"Lex, I just wanted to tell you that...I will get him. I'll make him pay for this. Whether the police catch him, or my people, he will be brought down."

He stroked long, thin fingers over Lex's face, skirting around the bandage on his temple. No reaction.

"Lex?" Now he did sound worried. "Lex, what's wrong with you? You know I'm here, right? If you don't want to talk to me, fine, but don't play around like this. Tell me. I'll leave. I only wanted to see you were taken care of. Now come on, wake up. Talk to me." He shook him, gently.

_He doesn't know_, Chloe realized. _He doesn't know his son isn't as strong as he used to be_.

"You did lose a lot of blood..." Lionel murmured, but he didn't sound at all convinced. He sounded scared, and uncertain, and just a little bit helpless. His fingers trailed over his son's face like spider legs; Chloe felt the urge to rub her hands over her cheeks and forehead just in response, but Lex remained still and silent.

"You really should stop doing this, Son. Getting shot. Especially this time of the year. It's bleak enough as it is."

Suddenly, she felt ashamed, spying on the two Luthors, especially when Lionel leaned forward and placed a kiss on Lex's forehead. It was such a loving, unexpected gesture it made her feel dirty inside, and she pressed herself harder against the wall, looking away from the window. Of course Lionel loved his son. No matter what they did and said to one another, Lex was still Lionel's firstborn, and Lionel was still Lex's father.

"You'll be fine," Lionel whispered, drawing his hand through Lex's short hair. "I promise you'll be fine."

He stood up, but kept standing at the bed for almost a minute, looking down on Lex's unconscious form, _willing_ him to wake up. But Lex remained fast asleep, and finally his father sighed and turned away. Chloe was afraid he would notice her—or already have noticed her, speak her name, and humiliate her for spying on his little family scene...But he did nothing of the sort. Instead, he walked to the door, glancing back a final time to make sure that Lex really hadn't moved, really wasn't ignoring him; registering no other movement than the slow rise and fall of the younger man's chest, he left the room, picking up his pace in the hallway.

Chloe remained hidden behind the curtain for some time after he had gone, feeling breathless and stupid. Now _this_ was trespassing. She shouldn't have seen this, she hadn't wanted to see this. It felt wrong.

She crawled out from behind the table, walked up to Lex's bed and realized she'd never seen his face while he slept, not even when he'd fallen asleep on her lap. He was almost unrecognizable without either self-confident smirk or carefully blank expression. And so...white.

"Christ, Lex," she muttered. "This sucks in SO many ways."

Lex still made no reply. Nor would he, for some time, she knew. She dreaded not getting a sarcastic or flippant reply, and for that reason, could think of nothing to say. She sighed, brushed her hand over his forehead.

"Good luck, Lex. I'll come and see you soon." And suddenly, because she knew he'd appreciate it if he were awake, she added, "And a happy Christmas to you, in advance."

Making sure Lionel was no longer in the hallway, she sneaked out of the room and went back to where Clark was waiting and had, hopefully, not fallen into Lionel's claws.

TBC


	16. Chapter 16

Sooo, here we go again. You didn't really think I was quite finished with Lex, did you? No one gets off that easy…

Sixteen: In which Lex hits rock bottom 

Lex woke in a haze of confusion, feeling sick and disoriented to the point that he hardly knew who he was. His thoughts were slipping through his mind like fish in a pond: before he could grasp one it had slithered away and disappeared in the dark. Everything seemed unreal, distant. Just like when they'd had him doped up to the eyeballs in Belle Reve, at least until he managed to spit out the pills into his little cups of water paint and create tranquilized paintings.

He was lying in a bed, tied down

—no, not tied down, but he couldn't move his legs and his right arm, and something was keeping his left arm down as well, or rather, something was coming out of it.

_IV_, his sluggish mind provided. _what the hell am I doing here? Where am I anyway? Am I back at the asylum? Did they lock me up again?_

He tried to sit up, but forgot about it halfway, since it cost him an ungodly amount of energy and even a small movement made him dizzy and nauseous. Moaning, he sank back into the pillow. Apart from the dizziness he didn't feel any pain, which surprised him. Something told him he should be in agony, and the fact that he wasn't confused him even further.

He blinked as a woman in white clothing suddenly appeared next to his bed.

"Ah," she said, "You're awake. Or," she smiled, "mostly awake, at least. Just take it easy, Mister Luthor. You'll feel better in a moment." She gave him a small paper cup with a straw that had about an inch of water in it. "Here, drink this." 

Automatically, he reached out his right hand, only to find it tied to his chest in a sling. When he lifted his left hand, the IV wire pulled at his elbow, and he did not have the presence of mind to solve that particular problem. He tugged at it again, and felt a tiny twinge through the fog.

"No, no," the nurse admonished, and held the cup closer to his mouth, "Just sip it through the straw. That's it."

The water tasted like cold air. He hadn't been aware he was thirsty before he drank, but now the water was finished he was.

"Later," said the nurse as she took the empty cup away again. "You'll get some more later, when you've recovered a little." She observed with professional pity while he tried to focus on her face. "Do you know where you are?"

He thought he did. "Metropolis...hospital?" Huh. It was almost as if he were drunk—still a novel experience. He licked lips that had somehow dried out and chapped. But then bits and pieces of the last night returned—The forest! Blood on the trees! Edge! Edge had shot him...

"Easy, Mister Luthor," the nurse cautioned as something began to beep really fast.

"He shot me!" Lex gasped. "Edge shot me!"

"Yes," she said soothingly, "and you are safe now."

"Am I..." Adrenaline combined with the after effects of the sedative made for a lousy cocktail. He really should keep perfectly still or the water would come up again. But those bullets...

"You will be fine," the nurse said. "You lost a lot of blood, which is why the tranquillizer hit you so hard. We removed the bullets from your shoulder and your right leg; the others were shot through. It will take a while, but according to the doctor there's no reason you shouldn't completely recover." She said more, about torn ligaments and pain and morphine and other medication, but he kind of zonked out halfway through, and when he could focus again she was gone. Not very much saddened by this discovery, he went back to sleep again.

He had the most outrageous dreams about running after something and being chased, and vivid nightmares full of dead people and bleeding trees, that made him gibber with fear and left him in a state of even greater bewilderment, and when he woke up again the nurse was standing in front of him as if she'd never left, with the same horrid white cup with water in it. He was beginning to feel as if he were in an adapted version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, especially when she said,

"Good afternoon, Mister Luthor. Or maybe I should say Merry Christmas." Christmas. Christmas? Wait, wasn't he missing a day? She smiled a demonically sweet smile. "How are you feeling today?"

_Like luke-warm crap, bitch, what do you think_? "I'm fine," he croaked. The moment he spoke he realized that he wasn't. He hurt with a dull, throbbing ache that seemed to intensify with every breath he took. It was as if his entire body was preparing itself to start howling with pain, and was now gathering the air it needed for that first, primal scream in small, measured puffs.

He didn't make a sound, but the nurse must have seen him blanch, because she put the paper cup on the table next to him and checked his IV drip. It held several bags: one with blood, one with what was probably some saline solution, and one that was empty. "Almost out. I thought so. I'll get you a new one."

"What is that?" Lex rasped.

"Morphine."

"No morphine," Lex said.

She didn't even blink. Probably knew all about his little spaced-out holiday in Belle Reve. "You'll be in a lot of pain," she said calmly.

"Then find me something else. No morphine."

"I can give you some codeine. It's not as effective as morphine."

"No morphine," Lex repeated firmly, even though especially his shoulder was now pounding instead of throbbing.

She nodded. "Drink your water. I'll be back in a minute." 

Again, it was a pitiful amount of water, gone in two sips. The machine next to him beeped steadily. It was already getting on his nerves; he hoped they'd detach it soon. Though the pain was distracting, his head was clearer now, he no longer felt sick and he finally had the chance to assess his situation.

He was dressed in one of those extraordinarily embarrassing hospital gowns, although he could see why; there was no way the hospital staff could check his wounds if he were wearing PJs. A thick bandage encircled his left bicep. His right shoulder was heavily bandaged as well, the arm hung in a sling and was somehow fixed in place at his waist. Some kind of cage construction (which again reminded him of his stay in the loony bin) protected his legs from the pressure of the covers; beneath it, both his legs were wrapped up from knee to groin.

_Jeez, man, your sex-appeal grows whenever you open your eyes_, Lex thought sarcastically, flipped the covers over his legs again and lay back. Another day in the hospital. No big deal. He'd be out of it in about three days, maybe four. The last time he'd been shot he'd been up and about one day later, could move normally in two, and had felt fine four days after he'd collapsed bleeding on the pavement, so this should take about...twice as long? Wait, he wasn't healing very well, at the moment. So maybe it'd take up to a week. And another week, maybe two, until he could start working out again. Carefully, of course. All in all, it shouldn't keep him from going to China for his scheduled business trip at the end of January.

Or so he hoped. He was seriously let down by the pitiful state his body was in. Lifting the covers had exhausted him. The right side of his face hurt, the lower half of it rasped. He could now bend his left arm enough to actually rub his eyes; he could still feel the blood gumming his right eye shut. The wound on his temple throbbed, creating a tide of pain that ran through his entire head. When he tried to trace it with his fingers both his fingers hurt (after studying them he found out that there were IV punctures in the tips) and the stitched skin below the gauzy bandage hurt, so he stopped trying to find out how big the scar was going to be and closed his eyes.

"Mister Luthor?" It was nurse Nr. One again. She handed him a glass of water—a proper glass, this time, with a proper amount of water—and two white pills. He swallowed them without further comment. "Are you feeling hungry?"

He told her no, and went back to sleep the last bit of the anesthetic out of his system.

When he woke up for the second time, some two hours later, it was because the tidal pain that had started in his head was now running through his entire body, waxing and waning with every breath he took, and the intensity of it was making him sweat. The annoying machine was beeping quite fast again, further adding to his general discomfort. When he moved his head, his chin and cheeks rasped over the pillow; sweat stung in little scrapes and cuts he didn't even know he had.

_Help,_ some primitive part of him, a part that didn't give a shit about pride or strength—a sensible part, really—pleaded silently. _Can someone please help me? It hurts, and I don't know how to ask for help, and I don't have my little lead box, so could someone, anyone, please happen to come by and make it stop?_

Wasn't there some way to call for someone? A way that didn't involve howling 'NUUUURRSE!' at the utmost of one's vocal reach?

Thankfully, he was saved from making embarrassing calls by the arrival of another medical person, this time someone he knew very well. He'd never been so glad to see his pock-marked homely face before.

"Dr. Scanlan." He graced the man with what he hoped was a wry smile. "I hadn't expected to see you this Christmas."

Scanlan shrugged. "Ah, you know what it's like. If you have no wife, no kids, no social life, you're always screwed at the holidays. But I must say I return the sentiment. You should really try to come and visit our lovely hospital during another season. Christmas doesn't do it much credit."

Lex would have smiled but was too busy clenching his jaws together to keep from whimpering. Scanlan looked at the electrocardiograph, then back at him. "That thing's making me crazy!" Lex snapped, pointing his chin at the machine. "Can't you unplug it?"

"Yes, I was planning to have it removed. First things first, though. How are you feeling? No," he rephrased, when Lex started to speak but could not get any words out, "let me put it this way: If you had to rate the amount of pain you're in at the moment, on a scale of one to ten, in which one is hardly at all, and ten is unbearable, what would it be?"

Lex considered. Observing the pain clinically, rating it and tagging it eased his mind. "About eight," he decided. "Maybe nine in my shoulder."

"I see. Betty—nurse Newman—told me you didn't want to take morphine. Is there a specific reason?"

"It makes me…" Now how to paraphrase that horrible déjà vu of drugged confusion, absence of reason, and nightmarish half-sleep? "It makes me dream," he said helplessly. "It short-circuits my sense of reality."

Scanlan held out a tiny plastic cup containing two large white pills. "That was more because of the anesthetic we used than because of the morphine. Because of your former enhanced metabolism you probably never suffered from post-operation sickness, the nausea after being anesthetized. It's quite normal, I assure you. So," he continued, "I'm putting you back on morphine. I wanted to keep you asleep for another day, just so your body could recover for another 24 hours, but," he heaved a sigh of frustration, "your father strongly advised against it. He didn't seem to be aware of the chance in your condition, but I figured that if you hadn't told him, neither should I, since it would mean a breach of the doctor-patience confidence. Against better judgment I decided to humor him. I was afraid he might take you to another hospital if I kept you under."

Lex nodded. It was to be expected that dear old Dad's fingers were itching to interfere with his son's life. "You made the right choice. He doesn't know. I don't want him to know. It might drive him to make more life-altering decisions for me." He swallowed, looked at the pills rattling gently in the cup in his left hand. "These won't make me hallucinate?"

"No," Scanlan assured him. "They might make you feel a little groggy, but until your blood's replenished itself and you've gained some strength, most things will do that for you. The main thing is that they'll block your pain and allow you to rest more easily. In a few days we'll switch back to codeine, but for the moment I strongly urge you to take the morphine pills."

"Right." Lex reached for the glass of water on his side table. "I'll trust your word, then."

"Good!" Scanlan seemed genuinely pleased. "Now, is there anything else I can do for you?"

"You are awfully accommodating for a doctor, aren't you?"

"I just badgered you into taking pain medication," the doctor smiled. "I wouldn't call that accommodating. Besides, it's hospital policy: patients that lose over two pints of blood get a slightly better treatment than your old boring average patient. Being one of the hospital's fund raisers also helps, of course," he added as an afterthought.

"In that case…" Already the pills seemed to have dulled the razor edge of the pain. Either these pills rocked to heaven or the placebo effect was admirable. "I'd like to shave myself. However," he said, when the doctor seemed likely to interrupt him, "since I'd probably take my nose off if I tried to shave myself with my left hand, I'd like someone to come by and do it for me."

"We have Gillette Sensitive for such cases," Scanlan said dryly. "you'd have to work very hard to shave your nose off with an electric razor. Still, I wouldn't recommend using one. But if you insist…"

"I do,"

"…I can ask one of the nurses to come by."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"When will I be able to leave?"

Dr. Scanlan laughed. "Let's talk about that when you can stay awake for periods longer than one hour, shall we?"

_Evasion_! "No," Lex said, shooting the cardio machine a dirty glance as it sped up again. "Let's discuss that right now. Nurse num—I think you called her Betty? She said I'd be fine. So why don't you want to tell me how long it'll take before I can get out of here? And can you PLEASE shut that machine off?"

In reaction, Scanlan flipped a switch and the beeping stopped. Lex breathed a sigh of relief. He didn't know why, but hearing his emotions translated into pulses made his nerves ache.

"Lex," the doctor started, and it was never a good sign when doctors started addressing you by first name, "the mere fact that you survived such a shooting is nothing less than a miracle. If they'd brought you in ten minutes later, you'd have bled to death."

"That's very inspiring. However, I was nice and early. So why won't you tell me how long it'll take before I can leave?"

"Because it depends on a number of factors," Scanlan said patiently. "I might be able to give you an estimate in a day or two, when I see how well you're reacting to the various treatments you're undergoing, and how well you're healing…but for the moment I'm afraid you'll have to exercise some patience.You'll be fine, though. Apart from your shoulder nothing was badly damaged, and that should heal completely as well. Don't worry. Concentrate on getting better. We'll have you back on your feet as soon as possible."

Lex privately thought that sounded rather ominous, but he nodded obediently.

"And what about Edge? Did they catch him yet?"

"Not that I know of." Scanlan removed the cardio pads from his chest. "You have protection, though; there are two men sitting outside the door, scaring innocent family members and getting in the way of the staff." He called up someone to roll the machine out of his room. "I have to go now. If you need anything, just press the button on the remote control attached to your bed, all right?" Then he left, humming 'Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer' under his breath.

"December," Lex muttered to himself, and to any listening deities, "I rename you the month of Pain. Henceforth, I shall never say your previous name again. 'Pain' shall be what you'll be known as for the rest of my bloody life."

The pills kicked in very hard and very fast, and Scanlan had been right; now he was more or less awake and the sedative had worn off, the feeling of confusion and unreality had left him. Someone came by to shave him; a fat, sweet, ugly black woman with the most tantalizing perfume he'd smelled in a very long time. If she'd been pretty he might have tried to chat her up; as it was, he just thanked her sincerely when she left him smooth-jawed and drowsy, and even that made her giggle and smile inch-deep dimples into her chubby cheeks. He immediately fell head over heels in platonic love with her and told her that if she ever needed something, she should call him.

When she'd wiggled out of the room he lay back, thinking it all wasn't as bad as he'd thought. At five, nurse Number One came by to ask if he wanted to eat something. "We have turkey," she said, with a smile that was both wry and proud.

"Of course you do," he replied. But he had some of it, along with more painkillers, and he was tripping quite happily when the half-open door opened wider, and a blonde head poked inside.

"Chloe?" he asked unbelievingly. What on earth could she be doing here?

But she was definitely here. Sneaking in and returning the door to its former position, she grinned widely, with a touch of horror.

"Lex! You look...like crap!"

Lex raised an eyebrow. The bandage on his temple pulled unpleasantly at his forehead. "Thank you. You, on the other hand, look very nice." She made a little pirouette, showing off something loose and velvety, with trim, dark red pants and high heeled shoes. "No boots?"

She grimaced. "I'd hoped not to need them this evening."

"Ah. Yes. I understand. What are you doing here, though? Not that I'm not glad to see you, but according to the nurse it's Christmas, and I thought you'd spend it in Smallville?"

She shrugged, plunked down on the chair next to the bed and crossed her legs. "I couldn't seem to get into the right spirit. As I was devouring huge amounts of pudding I kept thinking about how you were probably here all by yourself, so I just hopped into my car and drove back. There wasn't a person on the road. I was here in about two and a half hours."

"Impressive," Lex said, which for some reason made her twitch. "So," he started, and "So," she said. He gallantly waved his hand at her, frowning at the IV, motioning her to speak first.

She opened her mouth and the usual avalanche of words burst out. "How are you? I mean, I've resorted to every kind of communicational manner short of tackling someone to find out how you are doing, but they were all too busy wiping up puddles of puked-up Christmas turkey, running around or other things, and—did you know there's a pair of glowering gorillas sitting in front of your room? They'd only let me in after I showed my badge...Well. Are you ok? When I was here Sunday night, they said you'd be ok, but I wanted to see for myself." She looked at his arm. "Are you in a lot of pain, or...?"

"Not now," he said, smiling dreamily. "They have these amazing pills. I should've had them at Excelsior, I would have made a fortune. There are no places more morally polluted than private all-boys schools, you know. One day we had to pick the needles out of the ceiling..."

"I'm glad reminiscing about your school days can still bring a smile to your lips," Chloe said caustically. "It sounds like a healthy, safe environment for developing children."

He nodded. "Absolutely." Something occurred to him. "Did I thank you yet, for saving my life?"

Chloe looked away. "I didn't, really," she murmured. "Clark did."

"Ahhh, yeeees, Claaaark," Lex drawled, and dismissed the subject. He was feeling just a little bit floaty. Discussing Clark was a far too hefty subject at the moment. Although he did make a mental note to come back to it at a later point. He hadn't been all there at the time, but he was certain even Chloe had to agree that a healthy corn-fed farm boy like Clark shouldn't have been able to lift another fully grown man with such ease, let alone run with him in his arms at the speed of a freight train.

But that was a conversation best postponed to another time. He didn't want to appear ungrateful. Maybe it was the morphine, but he still didn't really get why Chloe could possibly want to abandon a warm, well-lit and cozy house filled with friends to come and visit him in the hospital. Not that he wanted her to leave, but...well.

"I told you," she said, and that, in turn, told him that his thoughts tended to be audible at the moment, "I wasn't in the mood for merry feasts and jingle bells." She sighed. "I had other plans for Christmas. You ruined them."

"My apologies," said Lex, although he couldn't for the world follow what she was saying.

"You're forgiven." she assured him.

"That's good." He wracked his brain on what he could offer her, hospitality-wise. No cherry brandy. No food. Hell, he couldn't even offer her a comfy chair. Oh wait, he could offer his interest. "And you? How are you? I meant to call you earlier, but I couldn't find my phone. I must've left it in my jacket in the lobby." For a moment he worried about his phone, because there were things in it that he couldn't permit to reach the general public—phone numbers and such. And names. Dates. Liquidations, that sort of thing. He looked up when Chloe snorted and dangled her bag in front of his face.

"I'm sure it's safe," she said. "With those creepy Djinn waiters over there. They probably brought it to the entrance desk. Here, look at this."

"It's your purse," Lex said.

"Yeah. It's my purse. It's my bloody purse! Can you believe it?" Her eyes widened with indignation.

Lex prodded his brain. Morphine must be more mind-fuddling than Scanlan had claimed, because he didn't have a clue why she was so mad. Not understanding made him tired, his tiredness made him impatient. "Chloe, what is your point?"

For one second she stared at him, incredulity creeping into her expression, then the anger faded and changed into understanding. "Lex, this is the bag Edge took from me when he kidnapped us. He sent it back to me. It arrived on Monday, in a little box with my name on it. No fingerprints, nothing missing, nothing changed. He vanished from the face of the earth, but before he pulled his escape stunt, he took the trouble to return my bloody purse to me!"

"He's a lawyer," Lex quipped. "Lawyers are conscientious people. Or maybe he feared repercussions. After all, women are very protective of their favorite handbags, aren't they?"

"But why take the trouble to send it back to me? Why not just dump it somewhere, or leave it in the car—they found his car back, d'you know? Again, no fingerprints, and no clue to where he's gone. He must have planned his escape inch by inch—did he also plan in posting my bag? It's driving me crazy! I've had it investigated to the lining, but there's nothing hidden inside, no bomb, no gloating letter, nothing! Edge kidnapped the both of us, scared me half to death, used you for a bull's eye, disappeared into the setting sun BUT RETURNED MY BAG TO ME! I mean…why? WHY?"

Lex blinked. "I don't know, Chloe," he drawled. "Maybe it's his way of apologizing. 'Sorry for ruining your evening, but at least here's your purse back.' I don't know. What he wanted was me; he didn't want to hurt you. He told me so," he added quietly. "in the car. When the other man had pulled you out already." He smiled, which made Chloe's eyes widen in alarm and her hand flip to his forehead.

"You feel a little hot, Lex. Maybe I should call a nurse."

"Don't be daft. I'm fine. I just remembered…You were very brave. In the car. I just needed to compliment you on that."

"Gee, thanks," she said sarcastically, but then she smiled as well and drew her hand down his face in a caress. "I thought you were very brave as well. If it hadn't been so incredibly stupid to keep aggravating him, I'd have applauded your negotiating skills."

"Aggravating? I did nothing to aggravate Edge!"

She rolled her eyes. "Lex. Sneering at someone because they have trouble pulling the trigger for the final shot? Not smart."

"I didn't do that!"

"Yes, you did."

"I was in agony! It must have been a grimace! I couldn't possibly have taunted him. That would have been stupid."

"Uhuh."

Lex was chagrined. "I'm not stupid," he grumbled. Chloe kissed him. Her lips tasted of gluh wein. Suddenly he wished he had a bottle of Lagavulin so he could get rip roaring drunk, like on most Christmasses.

"Oh!" she cried, and rummaged around in the infamous bag. "I brought you something." Carefully, she extracted a pine twig of about ten inches, then, like Mary Poppins, produced a glass ball, an arm's length of red garland, a small cork bird and a single led-lamp. "Your Christmas tree!" She hastily decorated the twig, held it out with a satisfied smile. "I wanted to bring something larger, but it wouldn't fit, so I settled for this. What do you think?"

Lex thought that suppressing his laughter had never been more painful. He was, however, extremely touched. "It's…lovely," he croaked. "Thank you. It's very…" A chuckle escaped him. "…very Christmassy."

"Laugh, you pig," Chloe muttered. "I knew I should've gotten you that Darkness CD."

"_So that's why I pray, each and every Christmas day  
That it would end  
Don't let the bells end  
Christmas time  
Just let me leave please,"_ Lex sang. "I always play that song after the first carol I hear. That would be around June, I guess. It's tradition. Just like watching violent movies. Last year I saw a movie called 'Santa's Slay'. It was quite good. It's about Satan's son, Santa. It's all in a name: Satan, Santa. Anyway, Santa loses a game of cards with an angel, or something like that, and in exchange has to be good for one thousand years. The film starts," he added with relish, "when those thousand years have passed and Santa starts up a body count."

"Sounds almost as enjoyable as 'Home Alone', or 'Labyrinth'," Chloe said.

Lex frowned. "I never understood why 'Labyrinth' is considered a Christmas movie," he mused. "The only thing remotely festive about it is the baby's outfit, which makes him look like a sugar cane."

"It's a feel-good movie. People like to feel good at Christmas time, I suppose."

"Most people, yeah," Lex said morosely. "Others enjoy taking innocent people into the forest and shoot them."

"Aww, Lex…" She looked away, and he was sorry for bringing it up. The poor girl had probably much rather been at the Kent farm munching raspberry pie too, instead of feeling obligated to sit up with a perforated billionaire.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to be snappish. It's just…What do you want, Chloe? I can't get you anything. I fall asleep every few hours. I'm really glad to see you, and I'd like you to stay, but I…I kind of keep coming up with the blue screen of death."

Chloe, familiar with Windows, nodded. "It's ok, sweetie."

He grinned at the 'sweetie'. "I know something. It seemed to work the last time." He gestured at the TV above his bed. "It's no broad screen, and it isn't hidden behind ugly paintings of half naked woman, but it's bound to be showing one of those feel-good movies you're so fond of, it being Christmas and all…If I move over a bit…" He tried, and almost fainted. "Ok," he panted when the worst of the pain had faded, "maybe I don't move over. But if you lean…Bloody IV."

Chloe giggled. He was glad she could still see the humor in the situation. He was rapidly losing sight of it, himself. But after a little maneuvering and a small contortionist act by Chloe, she was more or less arranged beside and under him in a somewhat comfortable position. Lex was very glad the cardio machine was no longer attached to his chest; his heart was racing with pain and exertion and he didn't doubt the beeping would have driven him stark raving mad.

Chloe pressed a cool palm against his sweat-damp cheek. "Are you ok? I can leave if you'd rather go to sleep."

"No. Stay."

"Woof."

"Look. It's 'The Temple of Doom'. Another cheerful Christmas-themed movie. Child labor always makes me feel all tingly inside."

"Don't be absurd. It's not about child labor. It's about Good conquering Evil."

A small child collapsed into Harrison Ford's arms, with its last strength pushing a piece of leather into his hand.

"Looks like child labor to me," said Lex. He settled against Chloe's shoulder. She wrapped one arm around his neck and used one hand to keep the IV wire out of her face. If she didn't lean too much to the right she might be able to balance that way on the very edge of his bed without falling off. Her wrist was a hard thing in his neck, and the pressure of her breasts, while nice and soft, hurt his left arm.

"Are you comfy?" Chloe asked. "I'm not hurting you?"

"Yes," Lex said drowsily. "And no." He breathed in the faint remnant of the scent of Kent house: home-cooked cookies and pies and warm wine, combined with shampoo and perfume, and again decided that despite everything, he'd definitely had worse Christmasses. He was asleep before Indiana Jones and Co. had even entered the Temple of Kali.

_Well, _Chloe thought, amused, _I did once pride myself on the fact that he'd let his guard down around me._ Apparently Lex thought her presence was so relaxing he dropped off whenever she was around.

Ah well. She really couldn't blame him. Those awful bluish shadows had gone, thankfully, but he was still white as dough; she could see the freckles on his nose. However, he looked a lot better than Sunday evening, and he sounded pretty optimistic. That was good.

She watched the movie, curled around Lex in her awkward position. Within ten minutes her arm went to sleep, but she ignored it. The rest of her was warm and more or less comfortable, and though she doubted Lex would wake up for anything less than a canon salvo, she didn't want to risk disturbing him.

Clark, Lois and Lana had not understood her inability to celebrate Christmas. She even had a bit of a fight with Lois when she decided to drive back to Metropolis—"What are you gonna do, Chlo?" Lois had protested from behind clouds of smoke and condensed breath. "Sit next to him and hold his hand? You can't even be sure he'll appreciate you coming over! Why don't you just stay here? You've just been through hell and back; the last thing you need is to spend this night with a Luthor—especially one riddled with holes."

Martha, on the other hand, had said nothing, only handed her a package with raspberry pie, plum pudding and left-over turkey 'in case she didn't have anything for tomorrow morning', and begged her to drive safely, and give them a call when she'd arrived home.

"Mom!" Clark had moaned, as if he were still sixteen, but in the end he'd even offered, out of Lois' earshot, to run Chloe over to the big city. She'd politely declined. She could use the drive for contemplation. Why, exactly, wasn't she able to enjoy herself in Smallville? Lois was right; Lex was taken care of, and she wouldn't be able to do much for him anyway, nor he for her—apart from giving her an answer as to why Edge had returned her handbag to her. Which he'd turned out not to have been able to do. And she hated visiting the sick. Then why was she lying here now, with a crick in her back and a numb hand, perfectly content, while Punctured Prince Charming was out like a light? She'd seen 'Temple of Doom' six times, and actually preferred 'Raiders of the Last Ark' over the 'Temple'; she should be bored out of her skull and missing her usual lively conversation…but she wasn't. How queer was that?

She might have damaged her brain continuing her self-analysis if a stern-looking nurse hadn't entered the room and Disapproved of her with a single arched eyebrow.

"I beg your pardon, Miss…?" the woman started, without even a glimpse of pardon in her entire being. "But what are you doing in Mister Luthor's bed?"

Well, you see, Hunter, he had such big teeth and I thought…"I was just…" she started, and Lex's eyes opened and swerved unerringly toward the nurse's face. Guerilla mode activated. 

"We're watching TV," he said, and the woman's raised eyebrow twitched at the tone of his voice. The sentence was harmless enough, but somehow Lex was able to make it sound like a threat including severed horse heads and chopped off hands.

"But…" she sputtered, "you're supposed to be resting!"

"I am," Lex said in a drawn-out drawl. "Resting."

_Has so far only been exposed to Luthor politeness_, Chloe surmised. _Has created inner picture of friendly, collected, obedient patient with perhaps only mild stubbornness. Poor thing._ Risking a lash-out of Luthor temper herself, she drew back her arm and carefully drew herself to a sitting position. It wouldn't do to fall in a sprawl at the nurse's feet.

"It's alright," she said, hissing as seven million pins and needles attacked her hand and elbow. "It's finished anyway." Indy and Willy embraced under a spray of water. Lex's mouth formed an 'oh', then he smirked. She smirked back. _Yup. You fell asleep on me again._

"Fine," the nurse reasserted her authority. "I'll give you a minute to say good bye, but it's over eleven, and you really need to go to…" she swallowed the rest of her words as Lex shot her a slow, cold glare.

"Thank you," Lex said threateningly. The nurse fled. "That was Nurse Number One," he informed Chloe. "She treats me as if I'm a twelve-year-old half-wit."

"No longer," Chloe guessed.

He smiled evilly. "No." Then he sighed. "I'm sorry. I don't seem to be able to spend time with you without falling asleep, at the moment. It's not you," he added, smiling again. "It's me. I hope you enjoyed the movie. Is your arm alright?"

She rubbed it. "Better than yours, I think. Any of the two."

"That's probably true."

"Um…So…Shall I come by tomorrow? Or were you…"

"I'd like that," he said. "If you bring a game of scrabble maybe I can stay awake."

"Ah, I kind of like the peace and quiet when you're sleeping," she grinned. Picking up the miniature Christmas tree, she pinned it to the board on the wall behind his head. "There. Merry Christmas, Lex."

He barked a laugh, coughed, grimaced, then smiled again. "Merry Christmas, Chloe. And…thanks. Again."

"You're welcome. Again." She kissed his forehead, hoping he was just warm with sleep and not with fever. "See you tomorrow, then."

When Chloe was gone, Nurse Number One strode back into the room and all but force-fed him his evening dose of morphine—the revenge of the Nurse. Lex hardly cared; he gratefully swallowed his pills, watched a block of commercials and went to sleep again.

And in the dead of the night he woke up coughing, with the feeling as if someone had put a handful of broken glass in his chest. Coughing hurt enough to rip through the pleasant haze of the morphine. After the first fit he hoped he hadn't pulled any stitches in his shoulder; after the second fit he wondered why he wasn't spitting up blood by the bucketful. It bloody _hurt_, he'd never felt anything like it before. For a moment he thought about pressing the button on the remote control, but decided against it—after all, it was probably just the flu again. Which sucked, but still…He silenced the whiny voice in the back of his mind, put his head back on the pillow and willed himself back to sleep.

In the morning, the sweet ugly nurse was the first to enter his room. She greeted (and woke) him with a radiant smile and a cheerful "Good morning, Mister Luthor!", then frowned at his haggard appearance and asked him how he felt.

"My chest hurts," he said calmly, and promptly had another coughing fit.

The woman listened to his breathing, asked him to describe the nature of his pain, and where it was situated, and turned on her heel. She returned only a few minutes later with his pills, his breakfast and a thermometer that looked like a tiny hammer and registered his temperature in his ear.

"Hmmm," she said, and he looked up inquiringly from a forkful of scrambled egg that probably didn't know what a real egg was. It certainly didn't taste like anything a chicken could have hatched from.

"Hmmm?" he asked, putting down the unpalatable stuff. He wasn't hungry anyway. "Are you going to shave me again?"

"After breakfast," she promised, tucking the thermometer away and studying him with an expression he didn't particularly cared for.

Lex wished she'd smile again; those dimples were reassuring. He pushed his plate away. "Done."

"You need to eat, Mister Luthor."

Oh, how he hated to be patronized. "Would you be able to stomach scrambled egg powder while your jaws scraped against your shirt?"

Her brow wrinkled, then she rumbled a low laugh and reproduced those dimples. "No," she agreed, "I wouldn't. I'll tell you what. If you eat the rest of that piece of toast, I'll shave you AND I'll get you a muffin."

"More special treatment?"

"You did lose over two pints of blood, didn't you?" she said with a wink.

_God, _thought Lex_. Somebody please come and get me out of this hell hole._

One hour later he was staring at the ceiling, shaved, stuffed to the gills with muffin, brushed and washed, examined by a man with the coldest hands he'd ever felt, embarrassed to the tips of his ears and absolutely ACHING to get out of bed.

But he couldn't.

Because moving, let alone getting up, _hurt_.

And because if he did anything that cost him any physical effort, his lungs contracted and sent spasms of pain through his chest. The morphine calmed him down, and they'd given him yet another IV, but it didn't drug him, and he found his thoughts running havoc in his head.

Maybe he had a fever again, that would explain the way he was feeling. His entire being rebelled against this state of helplessness. He was sick and tired of being in pain, he wanted it to be over. And he wanted this bloody flu to pack its cobwebs out of his lungs and go bother someone else.

He wanted…

He wanted…

When Scanlan sauntered into his room, he'd worked himself up to a fine state of agitation that had sweat gleaming on his cheekbones and his heart once again hitting itself against his ribcage as if it were a savage animal.

"Lex," Scanlan said pleasantly—which was as bad a sign as any, the pleasantness. Doctors were rarely pleasant just because they felt like it. "How are you doing? Diana said you were feeling a little restless."

It was all Lex could do not to howl 'Let me out! LET ME OUT!'. Instead, he choked on his words and began to cough. It felt like he was tearing something in his chest, and it hurt, it hurt so much it dwarfed the pain of his shot wounds.

Scanlan helped him sit up while he coughed, and held on to him until he could breathe again.

"Don't…" Lex gasped, "don't tell me I've caught the flu again." There was an ominous rasp in his lungs. His body tried to spasm around that rasp, cough it out, but he forced it down. His poor abused shoulder was weeping quietly.

Scanlan eased him back into his pillows. "No," he said, still sounding pleasant and upbeat, "No, it's not the flu. You've done it one better this time. At the moment, we're treating you for pneumonia."

"Pneumonia?" Lex echoed weakly. "Pneu…you've got to be fucking kidding me."

"Lying on the freezing ground with all your defenses down is…"

Lex didn't hear him through a chorus of little voices cheering in his head.

_Hello Lex! It's us, your, Lex Luthor's, personal demons. We're charged with making sure your Christmas is bad, worse, worse still and even more worse every succeeding year. Two years ago we were on a roll: how could anyone resist two bullets on Christmas eve!? But we've been slacking. We've been neglectful. We freely admit it. We were going so well two years ago, but then, last year, your Christmas was perfectly acceptable. Boring, lonely, but there was no physical damage, no mental trauma. Therefore, this year, we have made up for that. Give us a hand, kind sir, for this Christmas we present you with not three, not four, but FIVE bullet wounds! Hurray! And, and let's not underestimate this, my friend, as an additional bonus we have ALSO managed to bring in a lovely little case of…let's hear it…pneumonia! That's right! An infection of the lungs! Isn't it marvelous? Thank you, thank you!_

"Will this ever stop?" Lex interrupted him. "This…this…continual deterioration? Am I ever going to get better, or should I just give up hope and save myself the trouble? Was getting shot five times not enough? Am I going to fucking die of some stupid old people's disease?!" His voice rose to an outraged shriek. He really should have known better. Cruddy lungs did not respond well to shouting.

When he'd finally finished coughing, Scanlan sat down on the chair next to his bed, waited until Lex had sucked enough air back into his lungs to listen to what he wanted to say.

"You're not going to die," he said. "As a matter of fact, it was to be expected."

"What," Lex seethed, "getting shot is often accompanied by pneumonia?"

"No," Scanlan said unperturbedly, "but the flu is. You were sick last week, weren't you? When you called me on Tuesday your description fit the symptoms of the flu exactly. One is always vulnerable after…"

"But I was _fine_," Lex whined, still boiling with outrage. "There was nothing wrong with me anymore."

"However, after your traumatic experience in the…"

"Would you STOP saying traumatic experience? What's the state of my fucking mind to do with my BODY breaking down?"

Scanlan took a silent, deep breath and Lex bit down on his tongue to keep from yelling at him at the top of his inflamed lungs. Scanlan couldn't help it, either. Damn him to hell for that. "Sorry," he grated out. "Do go on."

"When you got here," the doctor started gingerly, "you'd lost over three liter of blood and your body temperature was 96.9 degrees."

_Again that obsession with temperature_. Lex frowned, but kept his mouth shut, much to Scanlan's obvious relief.

"It really is no wonder that, combined with the _physical_ trauma of being shot, the cold and the blood loss, the infection that might have been only in its initial state, and might never have surfaced otherwise, has developed to this extent."

"And what extent is that?"

"I can assure you it's not as bad as you seem to think. My colleague has established that both lung tops are inflamed, but with the proper medication and bed rest we'll have the infection beat in a week or two." He smiled reassuringly.

Lex was appalled. "Two…weeks?"

"Well, you weren't going anywhere, anyway, were you?" Scanlan said, still smiling as if this was all a minor inconvenience instead of an blood-curdling tragedy.

"But…I thought…" He pulled himself back together. Why was that so difficult? He'd never had this much trouble composing himself before. "How long am I going to have to stay here?"

"That depends on how well you're healing." The doctor shrugged. "I'm hoping you'll be able to start therapy—physical therapy—in a week or so, although we shouldn't move too fast. First, that infection in your lungs must be gone, then we can start thinking about rehabilitation…

When Scanlan had left, Lex lay in his bed in silence, completely, utterly defeated. There was simply not enough left of him to fight the despair that was hemorrhaging into his soul. He could take disappointment, he could take disillusionment, and he could take everything the world threw at him; he was a Luthor, after all, he was used to swallowing instead of spitting, turning the other cheek while pushing a gun into someone's gut, bowing his head while plotting revenge. Sooner or later, more often sooner than later, the world pulled away, stepped back in startled apology, found a dagger in its back and kneeled down in submission…but not this time. It just kept hitting, and hitting, and hitting, until all there was left was this pathetic puddle of bloody pulp on the pavement.

Lex liked to think of himself as flexible, a flawless computer in a little rubber ball that bounced back from every punch and throw and knocked everyone in the teeth that underestimated him—well, he wasn't made of elastic rubber any more. He didn't bounce back, he splattered all over the place. Literally. And apparently losing three liters of blood wasn't enough, no, now his useless body had decided to abandon him just a little bit further, say, to just before the wolf pen instead of in front of the glass.

_I __**am**__ going to die here_, he realized, and somehow it was much, much worse thinking so lying safe in bed than while he was bleeding to death in the forest_. I'm going to die here because some vengeful bastard couldn't aim well enough to kill me with his fucking gun. I'm going to die because my fucking body won't repair itself. I'm going to die because that fucking little brat couldn't keep her fucking hands to herself and…_

_I'm going to fucking die!_

Tears of rage and helplessness burned in his eyes, as painful as the infection in his chest and far more painful than the bullet wounds in his limbs.

_I'm going to die in a fucking hospital bed!_

_No! No. I'm not going to cry. I will not resort to such pathetic behavior. I won't. Luthors don't cry, not even when facing death in a FUCKING HOSPITAL BED!_

Something hot ran from the outer corners of his eyes down his cheeks. He couldn't be crying, because Lex Luthor did not cry out of self-pity. If he ignored it, it was sure to go away.

It didn't. Now the pump had been primed, it was more than happy to gush forward, and not even the highly uncomfortable feeling of tears dribbling into his ears could make it stop. Then he began to sniffle, he really couldn't stop it; he was trying to breathe normally so hard it almost choked him. He took a deep breath, and a sob—a fucking sob!—escaped from his tightly closed throat. Lex's self-loathing rose to crushing heights.

Lex Luthor must be already _Requiesquat in Pace_, because he sure as fuck didn't recognize himself in this blubbering wretch here in this hospital bed. _Stop it_, he commanded himself, scrubbing his eyes with clumsy movements. _Stop it right now! Breathe. Stop sniveling._

_Jesus Christ I don't want to die! I don't want to die, not like this, not this way! _

The breath he had drawn, manfully, deep into his lungs blew out in quivering hitches. Panic bloomed when he found that it took him too long to expel the air to breathe in again when he ran out of oxygen. His chest constricted, air passage blocked, and he began to cough again, and now the pain of tears was NOTHING compared to the pain in his chest and shoulder. It was as if he were being torn apart inside.

It didn't last long, but by the time the coughing eased Lex's inhibitions had been ripped to shreds and he just let the tears come. If even restraint proved destructive, what did he have left? Even as he tried to whip his character back into shape, all he could think was _I want to be me again. I want this to stop. I want to be me again. I want my old body back!_

_Crap_, Chloe thought as she entered after a brief knock on the half-closed door. _I don't think he's doing as well as I thought._

Lex stared at her with red-rimmed eyes and a mottled blush on his cheeks, chin raised defiantly but his lips quivering.

"Bad time?" Chloe asked, closing the door behind her.

He tried to smile, but wasn't very successful. "I just…I really miss my Iron number three," he said, bravely feigning humor. His voice cracked. "Then again, if I had it here, I doubt I'd be able to lift it…so," he sniffed, "I guess I'd be wreaking preciously little havoc anyway."

"Ah yes," Chloe said while she said down on his bed. "You don't play golf with your clubs. You use them for stress relief."

Lex nodded, not looking at her. He had his eyes cast down; they were filling again, but no tears fell because he did not blink. "Could you…" He cleared his throat. "Could you leave me for a moment? I know you only just arrived, but…"

Chloe put her hands on his shoulders, making sure she didn't come anywhere near the bandage on his left. "No," she said calmly. He was shaking with the effort it took him to hold himself together. "You don't have to be alone in this."

He looked up sharply, eyes wide, and tears streaked down his face. "No!" he said, unconsciously echoing her, and began to push her away. "No, I don't need you, I don't want you here, just leave me alone, go away, just go away!"

Christ, Lex, do you even know what you're saying? 

"Lex…" She pulled him closer, again taking great care not to hurt him or touch the IV. "Don't be an ass. It's ok."

He kept fighting her for a few more seconds, but there was little strength behind it, and finally he collapsed against her. At first, his entire body was rigid, stiff, unresponsive under her soothing hands; he was holding his breath to keep from breaking down—Chloe knew all the signs. Every girl who'd been in love, every girl that had been hurt, hell, every girl that had lived through _puberty_ knew how these kind of storms started, and also how futile it was to try to keep it inside. She guessed Lex had never witnessed one of those storms, let alone been through one before, himself, or he would have saved himself the trouble of fighting…Or maybe he had, and fought it anyway. In vain, of course. Sure enough he began to cry, his face pressed tightly against her shoulder, his right hand clenched in the soft fabric of her sweater. Harshly at first, but silent the moment he had gasped enough air to cry without sobbing, he gave up his fight and leaned his entire weight against her chest.

"Ssh," she whispered, stroking the soft hair at the base of his skull—he was hot again, damn it. "It's ok. It's ok."

Lex gave a huge, very unsophisticated snort that made her fear for her sweater and took a shuddering breath. "No it's not," he said, muffled against her shoulder. "I'm going to die here."

She searched for a hanky. "Now why would you say that?"

"Because…" And just like that he stopped being miserable and became extremely annoyed. He pulled back, wiped his nose. She gave him a Kleenex. "Because…" he blew his nose and cast her a look that smoldered with rage, "I have…pneumonia. After everything that's happened, I'm going to be killed not by a fricking bullet but by pneumonia!" He whined as another flood of tears coursed down his face. "And I can't stop…this! Did he shoot off my balls when I wasn't looking? Because I swear I've been turned into a fucking _girl_!"

"Hey," protested Chloe, but then she remembered her own waterfall in the forest and subsided. She gave him another tissue.

"What?"

"Nothing. Don't scrub your eyes like that, you'll only rub them raw."

"Raw eyes," Lex hiccupped. "Now that would make a royal straight flush, don't you think? Five shot wounds, one pneumonia and two raw eyes."

"I'm missing the four," Chloe said. She picked up the glass on the table next to him and went to fill it at the fountain on the other side of the room.

Lex sniffled. He smiled, and then started to cry again. "Ugh!" he wailed, pressing the soggy tissue against his eyes. "It's hopeless! I've sprung a leak somewhere. I'm not normally like this," he swore, accepting more tissues and blowing his nose again, "when somebody shoots me. I'm not, you know."

"Of course not," Chloe said. "You normally bear excruciating pain in stoic silence."

His mouth formed a quivering curl. "Yeah. Apart from some particularly agonizing accident. Then I might curse a little. I don't cry. I never cry."

"Never," Chloe granted.

"A logical conclusion is therefore that this scene did not take place," Lex said. He lay back in the pillows, rubbed his red eyes. "Don't you agree?"

Chloe sighed. "If that's what you want. Nobody's going to laugh at you for breaking down once in a while, Lex. Edge almost killed you, for Chrissakes."

"Yes," Lex said softly. "They will." He tried to smile and couldn't. He wiped his face. "Good god, I'm never going to stop crying."

"Don't try so hard. I don't mind."

"I do," Lex muttered. She handed him the glass of water. He gulped down half of it, then lay back again, eyes closed.

"Hey," she said, putting her hand on his chest—the only part she could think of that was still more or less whole. His eyes opened at a crack. "I don't mind. You know why? You're going to be fine. You're just a little weak right now, and that's only to be expected after all you've been through. But you're going to be fine, and then we're going to have sex against those lovely windows of yours."

"Is that a threat?" Lex whispered, and now the smile did come through.

"Nah. Just a secret fantasy of mine."

"I see." He laughed soundlessly. "Sex against the window?"

"What can I say, Lex. It's the skyline. It's calling out to me. I'm sure lots of women think it's a major turn-on."

"You think? So that's why they keep drifting back to the windows…"

_Does that mean…_ "You never slammed anyone against those windows and just…took them?"

"No," Lex pondered. "No, I can't say that I did…"

"Then I claim first right," Chloe said.

Lex looked her in the face, and despite his reddened nose and watery eyes, she didn't think she'd ever seen so much affection in his face. He raised his right hand and briefly touched her nose with his index finger. "You've got it," he said.

"Wonderful!" she said, and tried to ignore how slutty she sounded. "I…"

And then a voice sounded in the hallway, and she would never, ever forget the look of sheer panic on Lex's face.

"Dad," he whispered. "That's my father."

Speed was essential. "You don't want to see him yet?" she asked. He shook his head, rubbed his red eyes, tried to draw himself straight. She pulled his hand away. "Don't wipe your eyes. Dip a tissue in water and just hold it against your eyes, that'll soothe the irritation. You just recover. I'll distract him. After all," she said, grabbing her bag and stalking towards the door, "you're not the only one who can draw fire."

She shot him a final grin, blew him a kiss and waltzed out of the room, clutching her bag under her arm like a rocket launcher.

TBC


	17. Chapter 17

Heyhey! Thanks for reviewing people! Very quick post before heading off to bed… Seventeen: In which Lionel antagonizes people

"Mister Luthor!" Chloe called out, ran up to and placed herself squarely in front of the tall, wiry figure of Lex's father, blinding him with full wattage. He stopped walking, if only because if he hadn't, he'd have bumped straight into her.

"Miss Sullivan." The faint questioning tone in his voice portrayed stunned surprise. "I had not expected to find you here." He made as to walk around her, but she stopped him.

"I'm sorry, but Lex is busy," _Smooth, Sullivan_.

He raised one of those lethal eyebrows. Lex totally had inherited that from him. "Busy?" 

"Well, you know. Something with needles. I was just visiting him." She stared him straight in the eye. "The doctor sent me out."

"Is that so?" There was something about Lionel's eyes that was just…creepy. His whole face was designed to look pleasant if somewhat cool, but his eyes were so, so cold. Staring into them made her skin shiver. _I beat him, _she reminded herself. _I testified his sorry ass into jail. And he won't ever forget that,_ she realized. _Or forgive me for that. Good god, what did I get myself into?_

But then she remembered Lex and his complete mental breakdown, imagined him going into the ring with his father in his current state and persevered.

"Yeah," she said brightly. "Sooo, I was wondering, shall we have coffee? I'm sure they'll be finished with him in about fifteen minutes." Fifteen minutes should be enough for Lex to pull himself together. His tear ducts should have dried up by then. 

Lionel studied her with that frighteningly intense stare of his, then, to her horror, _smiled_, and said, "Why not. I've been wanting to see you anyway, Miss Sullivan. It's actually a wonderful coincidence we're meeting like this. However," he cast a glance at his surroundings, "I refuse to drink that hospital slop they serve for coffee. Knowing your…ah…love for the black brew, I take it you won't mind taking our conversation to the café around the corner?"

_As a matter of fact, Mister Luthor, yes, I do, because, you see, you scare me to death and even though being creeped out over coffee has a certain charm, and I'm getting quite used to it, I'm really not looking forward to associating coffee with you._ "Sure!" she said, clutching her purse, this time for comfort. 

His eyes flicked to the bag, registered something, but he didn't speak. He gallantly put his hand in the small of her back, opened the door to the elevator hall for her. Thankfully, there were four other people in the elevator, so she felt more secure there. Lionel stared at the display with the numbers, his face unreadable.

She tried to imagine him kissing Lex's forehead, but after those few exchanged sentences, she was half and half convinced she'd been seeing things. Like Lex, Lionel was a very charismatic man, charming and engaging if he wanted to. It was all a mask. Luthors, it seemed, were all about layers. But unlike Lex's, Lionel's mask was only skin deep, and hid only ruthless ambition and a cold, calculating genius. In him she saw nothing of the almost compulsive sense of honor, the amazing, biting humor, the enormous compassion of his son—something she hadn't found in Lex until she got to know him as well as she did now. She'd seen glimpses of it over the years that he'd been Clark's friend, but that hadn't been slips of the mask or part of the mask; just Lex being Lex. Only after Clark had decided he wasn't worth the pain, Lex had perfected his mask, and he hardly showed anything of what coiled below. He had shown her. Below the mask, he was both beautiful and horrible in a way that was utterly, compellingly human. 

She knew Lex could be cruel. She knew he did things that were morally despicable. She was aware of the sometimes startling resemblance to his father, knew that he cheated and lied and used people—including her; she didn't make herself any illusions—like objects if the mood struck him. She knew he'd killed, and maimed, and blackmailed, either to further his own causes or because others would benefit by it. Edge had been insane, but she had no doubt that some of his allegations had been founded. Lex's ideas of morality were so badly screwed, and he was so good at relativating his actions that she didn't doubt he didn't even see that was he was doing was…well…evil.

But then there was that childish joy in driving too fast. And the way he protected his friends. And the way he twisted his tongue when he kissed her. And that slow, smug smile of his, full of arrogance and sarcasm that made her want to slap him silly and lovingly pat him on the head at the same time. And all those funny little disturbing quirks he had that made her laugh…and the startling vulnerability he displayed when he thought no one was looking.

And, so recently, there'd been the way he kept talking a gun out of her face, and, it made her shiver in the warm, stuffy elevator, the way he raised his chin just before Edge shot him in the head.

Lex, she thought, was an ambitious bastard, but his redeeming qualities were such that the number of second chances she was willing to give him was pretty high. Lionel…She'd detested him for what he'd done to her, her father, her friends. Now she also detested him for what he'd done to Lex. She was amazed anyone had ever decided to give him a second chance because she sure as hell couldn't imagine why anyone could be bothered.

Lionel, it seemed, could smell her resentment, and was amused to no end. As they walked out of the hospital and he once more held the door of the café open for her, she caught sight of his mocking smile, hidden behind cool indifference. She wanted to hit him. Instead, she had coffee with him.

Lex, you'd better shape up fast, baby, and have your windows cleaned because you SO owe me for this!

They sat down at a table overlooking the street. Lionel moved his chair so that his back was against a wall. Chloe fiddled with a napkin until a waitress came by and they ordered coffee. Espresso, no cream, lots of sugar. She needed all the caffeine she could get to get through this examination.

Unfortunately, Lionel started talking before the coffee had arrived. "You were with Lex, when he was kidnapped and shot." A statement, not a question. She wondered how much exactly he knew.

"Yes."

"I trust you were not injured?"

"No. I wasn't. It was Edge to do about Lex, not me."

"Good, good…" His smile was so uncaring it was insulting. "You knew Martin Edge, didn't you, Miss Sullivan? Not as Edge, I understand, but as Mister Smith, or Jones, or something like that."

The back of her neck started to prickle. "Yes," she admitted, deciding to stick to the truth. "I met him twice before. He was an informant."

"He provided you with classified information of LuthorCorp."

She lifted her chin. "Yes."

"Were you aware of the fact that this man filed over fifteen complaints and indictments, through other people, against LuthorCorp?" 

"No, I wasn't. I didn't know who he was, only that he had information that could allegedly bring down one of the companies."

"I see…"

The coffee arrived. Chloe folded her hands around her cup. She desperately searched for a way to stop the interrogation and make him eat his own words, but whenever she thought she had something, he blew away her thoughts with another question—questions she felt obliged to answer, for some reason.

"Miss Sullivan. You seem to be getting rather…close…to Lex."

"We're friends," she shrugged.

"Yet you saw no harm in betraying your 'friend' by meeting with a man who wanted to bring him down."

"I am a reporter," she snapped back. "I see no harm in trying to find out the truth. My personal feelings regarding Lex, or any other person, have no connection with my job."

"I see," Lionel repeated, and sipped his coffee. His eyes studied her over the rim of his cup. "So, professionally, you weren't sorry to see my son executed by a frustrated madman, since it has no connection with your personal feelings."

"I'd never…!"

"After all, he's just another tycoon who doubtlessly deserved his fate," Lionel persisted. "Perhaps a part of you professionally exulted in his downfall? Or even aided in it?"

"What the hell are you implying?" Chloe hissed. "That I'm responsible for Lex getting shot? That's just…"

"I'm not implying anything, Miss Sullivan," Lionel interrupted her. "But let me state a couple of facts. You knew Edge, and you knew of his hatred towards my son. You met with Edge twice. When Lex was taken, you were with him. In your police statement you stated that Martin Edge took away your handbag, but you have it with you now. I have an eye for details. I remember things like women's purses. He obviously returned it to you. And finally, while Edge shot Lex no less than five times, he drove away without even making sure you wouldn't report the whole matter to the police and get him landed in jail—not even after your experience in such matters? You will excuse me if I find that very hard to believe."

Chloe's lower jaw dropped; incredulously she stared at Lionel's cold face. _I don't believe it. I just don't believe it! He thinks I'm Edge's accomplice! Does he really think I'd assist ANYONE in doing THAT to anyone else?_

"You're insane!" she said hoarsely, so outraged she could hardly form coherent sentences. "I'd never do such a thing! I'd never hurt Lex…"

"You got him shot five times, Miss Sullivan. I'd say you've hurt him plenty."

"That just isn't true! I had nothing to do with Edge's revenge! The reason he went so far as to actually physically attack Lex was because he kept failing when he tried to beat him in a legal way."

"You seem to know him very well."

"I know the feeling of knowing that someone's actions are reeking to high heaven without being able to do anything about it," she snapped. "Stop insinuating that I know Edge; I don't. That's what he said before he shot Lex. Read my statement; I probably made a note of that as well."

"Ah. So you condemn his actions, but you do understand why he did it." It still sounded like an accusation.

"I…"

"I find it disturbing that you'd condone my son's social and corporate destruction, and would even investigate means to bring this about, but claim that you would never hurt him."

"I wouldn't go behind his back," she forced poise back at metaphysical gunpoint. "And I'd never, ever resort to physical violence. But if he—or you!—would do something that was illegal, despite the fact that he IS my friend, I'd see it my duty to report it. No one is above the law, after all. Not even Luthors."

He smiled that quick, sharp smile. Oh yes, that flash told her. We are. We really are above the law.

"Your relationship must be highly interesting," he drawled. "with your sense of 'duty' hanging above the seat of trust and friendship like Damocles' sword."

"What do you care? It isn't as if YOUR relationship with Lex is exactly healthy."

"Lex is my son," he replied calmly, and stirred his black, sugarless coffee. "My heir. We may have our differences, but he is still my blood and I prefer him to be alive. You endangered him, Miss Sullivan. It is my conviction that you will continue to do so. This time, young Mister Kent was fast enough to save him, but next time Lex might not be so lucky. Mister Kent has become less…shall we say diligent? in his efforts to stop those who harm my son."

_Oh, eew! Yuck!_ Just listening to Lionel made her want to toss her cookies. "So what do you want?" she demanded. "That I turn my back on him? Stay away from him?"

"That sounds like a very good idea."

"No way."

"Miss Sullivan, I strongly urge you to reconsider your relationship with Lex. Especially since your connection with his attacker is so…ah… complex."

You vile, onerous man! She slammed down her cup on the table. "Are you threatening me?"

He just blinked, slowly, like a snake. She almost, almost threw the remnants of her coffee into his face.

"No," she said. "No, I won't leave him. I won't let you chase me away. You don't want to deal with me? Turn around when you see me." The holy grail of defensive words came to her in a wail of angel song and divine light. "And if you think you can accuse me of collaborating with Edge, remember that I testified against you when you were charged with doing the same with his father, and that you were convicted. You can't touch me. I mean it, Mister Luthor. Stay away from me!" Cuddling her traitorous bag to her chest, she grandly swept out of the café…and threw herself against the nearest wall out of sight of the coffee house, shivering with nerves and rage.

"You bastard! You rotten, filthy _bastard_!" Why oh why hadn't Lionel been killed yet? Why did people keep failing to assassinate him? Why hadn't Martin decided to go after the father who betrayed his old man rather than take vengeance on the son who killed him in self-defense?

The son.

Shit.

She checked the time. Ten minutes. She'd been subjected to Lionel's poison for only ten minutes. Poking her head around the wall, she noticed Lionel's figure briskly walking back to the hospital.

Damn.

She hoped Lex had recomposed himself. If not…Lionel was vicious today. She'd better stick around and hope there weren't only pieces left when he finished his visit…

Lex was feeling very metrosexual. He'd dipped a tissue in water and held it against his eyes. He had even found a spoon somewhere and used it to cool his eyelids. If he'd had slices of cucumber he could have given himself a complete facial treatment—and in his current state, he'd probably have done so, too.

_Meet Alexia Luthor. Pathetic bitch extraordinaire._

At least his eyes had stopped stinging and now only smarted a little. It took him an insane amount of effort to keep them open, so he closed them. He had no hope of falling asleep, though; the adrenaline rush the mere sound of his father's voice had sent through his system was still roaring through his blood. It made his wounds throb. He didn't know why the thought of facing Lionel scared him so badly, at the moment. After all, what could his father do to him that surpassed what Edge had done already?

Tell Lex he was disappointed? Well, he'd been so for years.

Take his chance to have Lex abdicated and reclaim his position as head of LuthorCorp? Lex, at the moment, couldn't care less about LuthorCorp. He was just too tired to care.

Nevertheless he tensed as voices briefly conversed outside his room. The door opened. Lionel stepped inside.

Lex tried to rile himself up to his usual level of aggression whenever he faced his father, but all he felt was a big yawning chasm of nothingness. He didn't bother acknowledging his father until the man positioned himself in his line of vision—that is to say, between him and the window Lex had selected to stare out of.

"Lex."

"Dad." There, that was that. They'd spoken, he could leave now.

Lionel did not leave. He remained standing between Lex and the window, obstructing the small square of bright blue. "How are you doing, son?"

"I'm fine, Dad, thanks for asking." _Now leave. Just...leave. Please._

"The doctor told me you had pneumonia." Disbelief sounded in Lionel's voice, and Lex's mouth twitched in reaction. Wasn't this cute. His dad had more faith in his son's indestructibility than in the words of a doctor.

"Yeah," he said tonelessly. "Isn't it hilarious?"

"Lex..."

"Dad. Why are you even here?"

His father feigned hurt. "You're my son! You're injured. I'm worried about you."

Lex gave a derisive snort. He thought of something to say. Something like 'Well, I was glad to wake up and found you hadn't made any life-threatening decisions without my input, this time." but he really couldn't be bothered.

_I am so tired. I'm so bloody exhausted I couldn't care less about any of his schemes. Let him do a coup; I just wish he'd go and let me sleep._ He even closed his eyes but snapped them open when cool, dry fingers snaked over his forehead.

"Don't touch me."

This time, there was nothing feigned about the look of worry crossing his father's face. "You have a fever."

"Yeah," Lex snarled, "It's a symptom of pneumonia. Take your goddamned hands off my face."

"You haven't been sick since you were a child..." He stroked up, ruffling his son's hair...and Lex simply lost it. His arms shot out, pushing Lionel away from his so hard he dislodged the IV in his hand and felt stitches tear in his shoulder.

"Get OFF of me! Or so help me GOD, shot wounds or not I'll KILL you!"

Lionel stared at him, eyes wide. "Lex..."

"You've won," Lex spat, sinking back in his pillows. "There's no need to make me feel filial or to fake paternal worry. Congratulations, Dad, it'll all be yours again, and you didn't even have to poison me this time. It's..."

"What are you talking about," Lionel asked with well-acted surprise. "What do you think I am, some sort of monster? You're my son; I'd never harm you. You're sick and you're delirious, you..."

"You'd never harm me?" Lex whispered incredulously. "You locked me up in a fucking asylum! You almost murdered me!"

Lionel had the decency to look guilty. "That..."he started, "That was...you betrayed me. And I was another person, then."

"Yes, you've really changed. You've become a new man, Dad," Lex grated out. His hand hurt; when he looked at it he noticed he was bleeding again. Great. As if he hadn't bled enough. While he watched his blood drip slowly from his hand onto the sheets, it was as if the brief burst of strength brought about by the presence of his father dripped out of him as well. He was so tired he could cry. Again. He dropped his hand on the mattress.

"I never sought your death, Lex," Lionel said, softly. He walked to the basin on the other side of the room, plucked a few paper napkins out of a dispenser on the wall and sat down on the chair next to Lex's bed. When he picked up his son's hand it was with a certain amount of wariness, but Lex had exhausted his energy and made no move to pull away. Lionel pressed the paper against the cut, waited a few seconds, took it away. The blood kept oozing from Lex's hand. Lionel kept staring at it until it threatened to overflow and run down Lex's wrist, then he covered up the small wound again, leaned back and crossed his legs, resting his hands on his knee.

"How long," he began after a long pause, "have you been this way?"

"What way?" Lex said dully.

"This...vulnerable. Touchable. What happened to you, Lex? Is it connected to your growing hair again?"

"Who knows..." Lex murmured.

"But how? And why didn't you tell me?"

"Are you joking? What makes you think I'd ever let you know anything that concerns me privately again?"

Lionel exhaled, long and hard, and shook his head with a rueful smile. "Isn't there any way I can prove to you that you can trust m—"

"No."

"You're my son, I…"

"So you keep reminding me. It makes no difference."

"Lex,"

"I don't trust you, Dad. You successfully obliterated that emotion when you had me poisoned."

"But you do trust Chloe Sullivan."

Maybe it was because his numb brain was incapable of rising to the challenge, but Lex immediately realized what his father was up to. At any other moment he'd probably have started to doubt himself and anyone else after a carefully chosen insinuation. Now, however, he was too tired to succumb to paranoia.

"Yes."

"Even though she met with Martin Edge less than a day before he abducted and shot you?"

"Yes."

"You do not think it odd that she…"

"No."

Lionel combed his hair out of his face. Lex noted it with something approaching interest. The only time his father indulged in tics was when he was badly frustrated. Apparently Lex's lack of fighting spirit disturbed him—more than any battle technique Lex had previously employed.

How…intriguing. 

"Lex, I told you before that associating with that girl would prove disastrous for you, and look where it brought you! The mere fact that Martin Edge returned her bag to her…I take it she failed to mention that to you?"

Lex almost laughed. Lionel should try being friends with someone for a change. "Sorry, Dad. She didn't. She told me right away. It absolutely baffled her."

"And you believe her?"

"Why shouldn't I? She's never lied to me before." Unlike you. He didn't say it, but Lionel heard the words as clearly as if they'd been shouted into his ear. "What can I say, Dad. Having someone strip before you in the forest at night because they want to bind your wounds with socks and sweaters…it kind of creates a bond. If Chloe would've wanted me dead, all she had to do was walk away. She didn't."

"It could be a trap," Lionel warned. "To get close to you. To gain your trust."

"For what purpose?"

"For what other purpose than all the other women you've dated? Power. Money."

"You're just bitter that you never thought of buying her to spy on me," Lex said. "and that even if you'd try now, she'd refuse. Chloe doesn't care about any power other than her own. You might have tempted her with promises of a job at the Planet when she was a child, but she's come there on her own accord now, so you hold no sway over her anymore. As for money…" He sought his father's eyes, met them, his own eyes mirroring Lionel's, reflections of reflections forming a single cold blue passage between them. "I'd double, triple every offer you'd make her. And she'd refuse, anyway. She doesn't care about money either. You see, that's what makes her different from all the other women I've dated. The only thing she cares about is coffee." 

And sex. Against windows. He smiled. He was still weary beyond reasonable functioning, but all of a sudden the depression had lifted. He almost felt comfortable again.

"Dad, I'm really touched you came all this way to see me." Lionel reeled with the abrupt change in his son's demeanor, which really showed in nothing but the tone of his voice, which had gotten lighter and used a trifle more inflection. Lex, as well as Lionel, excelled at insulting through false appreciation. "But speaking to people really wears me out." _You're boring me to tears, Dad._

An expression closely resembling relief flitted over Lionel's face. He'd grown so used to communicating with Lex through verbal sparring sessions that he was at a loss what to do when his attacks were not deflected nor returned. "Of course," he drawled. "You must conserve your strength. After all, the doctor told me you'd been greatly weakened by both blood loss and your current…illness."

_You're weak, boy. Luthors aren't weak._

It was strange, but despite his very real antipathy, Lex became aware of a deep affection towards his father. There was comfort in this banter, a normalcy he wasn't aware he needed, but that now greatly eased his mind. He smiled. Lionel smiled back.

Peace negotiations through war.

Lionel put his hand on Lex's unhurt shoulder, squeezed it gently. "I'll leave you to your rest, then. You look like you're in dire need of it." His tone was scathing, his expression unreadable, but his touch very tender. _You do love me, don't you, Dad?_ "And I'll call for someone to do something about that IV. It seems to me that you've lost enough blood this Christmas."

"Christmas is already over, Dad. It only lasts for two days, you know."

"Long enough. I'm leaving for Chicago tomorrow morning. One of us should be present at the meeting there. Since you're out of commission logic dictates it should be me." _So I won't be able to visit you in the following days._

Lex nodded. "Make me proud, Dad," he drawled. Usually, Lionel detested him mentioning their reversed position in the Luthor business. This time, he understood Lex's words as they were meant: he was to substitute Lex for the time being, and Lex had faith in him. 

They nodded at one another in perfect understanding.

"Goodbye, Son."

"Goodbye, Dad. Fly safe."

Lionel chuckled. He opened his mouth to speak, probably to mention flights over deserted islands and black widows, but decided against it and only smiled.

"Always." He left, the fabric of his tailored pants flapping against his legs. 

Lex relaxed into his pillows, feeling oddly reassured. He was drifting off when a nurse came in to replace his IV. When Chloe peeked inside to see if there was anything left to salvage, she found him fast asleep, mouth curled in a faint smile.

"I'll be damned," she thought, and shook her head. She had expected to find fury, despair, icy silence, everything but this contented smile. She'd never understand the relationship between those two. 

"Well, everything's better than tears, I suppose," she murmured to herself. She supposed she should be happy. Why, then, couldn't she shake the feeling that she'd been cheated somehow?

On the 27th of December, Lex awoke early in the morning. Outside it was still dark, but the hospital was already bustling with activity; he could hear the soft sound of slippered feet in the halls, the muted conversation of the staff, beeping, clattering and swiping. Weird hospital sounds that grated on his nerves, but were a soothing reminder of people nearby as well.

He had his usual early morning coughing-till-exhaustion fit, his wounds ached and the back of his hand itched beneath the band-aid, but to his immense relief the need to cry had completely disappeared. It wasn't that he no longer felt sorry for himself; no, he was still convinced that there were few people around who were as badly off as he was at this moment, but it no longer dispirited him quite so much. The despair was gone, as was his self-loathing. He chastised himself for his break-down, accepted it, moved on. 

Well, move…

He tried bending his left arm. It hurt, but it worked and he didn't get the feeling he'd just ripped something. Then he tried lifting his legs and promptly broke out in a sweat. Ow. His right leg whined, but his left leg made _him_ whine, so he just left them alone for the time being. At some point the medical staff had removed the fancy cage construction over his thighs and he was doing fine without it, but once he carelessly dropped his hand on his leg and that still hurt enough to invent new expletives. 

The only thing he didn't try to move was his shoulder. That was really painful enough without trying. Maybe there was something to say for following doctor's orders after all.

When he'd had his pills, his breakfast, his shave and two more coughing fits, he lay staring at the ceiling and tried to fall asleep again, but apparently he'd recovered so far that sleep was not in demand anymore.

Now, he was bored.

Dreadfully bored.

He didn't have anything to read, he didn't have his phone, he didn't have his laptop, and he had no way to keep himself occupied apart from diving into his own mind.

When he was bored, Lex's train of thought accelerated, following tracks not necessarily suitable for traveling, speeding up as it went, until his thoughts raced through his head at a breakneck speed. The morphine made the run even smoother, and so he decided to plan out a route for his brain, because he knew from experience that if he didn't, he'd end up on the edge of a balcony shouting his little brother's name and ready to jump.

No, it was better to make use of his excellent memory, instead of fall prey to it.

First, he forced himself to relive his ultimate Christmas experience, starting by trying to remember every word Edge had said to him, every clue—if any—he'd given about who he was, where he'd come from, where he might run to. Apart from the redback spider, he came up with nothing.

Then he faced his fears by replaying getting shot a couple of times, until he could think about it in an abstract manner, and shake it off as a minor inconvenience. Unfortunately, every time he drew a breath the pain of his wounds and chest made it impossible to laugh about it, but Lex was certain that barricade would disappear when the wounds had healed.

He half-dreamed about Chloe for a while, but for some reason it was hard to imagine her naked against a window. He kept coming up with a picture of her hand, covered in blood, splayed over his shoulder while she tried to keep him from bleeding to death. If he tried hard enough, he could probably convince himself of some eroticism in that situation, but at the moment, the memory only made him shiver. 

From one pair of bloody hands he switched to another pair. He'd been so fucking freezing cold in the forest. The only moment of warmth he could recall was when hot fingers captured his face and tipped it up to make him meet Clark Kent's eyes. He'd been in too much pain to remember much else about that moment, but he remembered those hands on his cheeks.

He frowned. He didn't want to think about Clark Kent.

But he was fed up with reliving his failed execution as well. At one point he waived down a nurse and made her get him a newspaper and bunch of magazines, any kind of magazine, and a book with sudoku. Now he could at least interrupt his own thoughts if they threatened to become too unpleasant.

As usual, when he got hurt in some way, LuthorCorp and LeXCorp flourished in the stock exchange. 

"Think of it as a Christmas gift," he muttered to himself, and cursed the Daily Planet for sticking to A3 format. It was really hard to turn the pages with only one hand.

No one else had been shot during Christmas. On the other hand, twelve people had died in a massive car accident. Seventy thousand trees had been sold and would now be burned on the sixth of January. Talk about pollution. The soldiers at the front had toasted to peace on earth and eaten turkey; now the holidays were more or less over they could happily go back to killing one another. A woman he'd once fucked senseless in the back of a confession booth in a small Kansas church had organized a celebrity ball and had collected a few thousand dollar for the needy. 

The newspaper was a bit of a let-down. He still read it two times to make sure he hadn't missed anything.

He spent one hour solving thirty of the fifty sudoku, then stopped because it gave him a headache. He didn't even like sudoku. 

By eleven he had read all of the magazines, resolved to buy another car, and started to watch Oprah in a desperate attempt to alleviate his boredom. It didn't really work. He guessed he might be a discriminating bastard, but he really didn't care all that much about the woes of overweight midgets.

Thankfully, Nurse Number One brought him about a dozen get-well cards (one of which turned out to be a Wish You Had Died card. It took him some time with only his left hand, but he managed to fold it into an airplane and expertly pitched it into a dustbin in the far corner of the room). Some of the cards were from his employees: Mary had sent one with a horse with a thermometer in its mouth, and there were a few of other secretaries and acquaintances. Margaret's teenage daughter had sent one as well, with many hearts surrounding her signature. He didn't know whether to be touched or frightened.

Scanlan came by to see him, pronounced him greatly recovered, had the IV in his hand removed and gave him more pills instead. Only one more IV to go.

The good doctor hadn't left the room yet when Chloe burst in. Christmas over, Chloe had to go to work again, but she had driven over to the hospital 'just to see how he was doing.'

"I'm no longer bawling my eyes out," Lex said. "Although, of course, I never actually did."

"Of course not," Chloe consented. "You just had something in your eye." She grinned. "A splinter, or something."

"Very funny," said Lex. He drummed the fingers of his left hand on the edge of his bed.

"You do seem to be doing better, now."

"Luthors never stay down for long."

She snorted. "Right. Did you have a nice talk with your father, yesterday? He isn't around now, is he?"

Something in the way she spoke made his 'been insulted/blackmailed/threatened/raped/framed/insert other negative experience by Lionel' sense tingle. "It wasn't so bad. Thanks for drawing him off. How was your meeting? I assume you did something to keep him occupied?" He winced at the incredibly shitty way that came out.

Chloe shrugged. "I suppose it could've gone worse." She gave him a crooked smile. "Then I'd have probably been arrested for pouring boiling coffee over an elderly man's head."

Lex winced in sympathy. "That bad? I'm sorry."

She pursed her lips. "Mmmm. Lex…You don't…you don't believe I had anything to do with Edge, do you? I mean, you don't believe that Edge sent my bag back to me because I'm, like, his brother in arms or something, right?"

Ah. So that's what Dad had been up to. He shrugged with one shoulder. "If you were his accomplice you've been doing a lousy job. I'd like to think you're too intelligent to confuse 'If I don't kill him just let him bleed out or freeze to death' by 'Do everything to make sure he survives'. So," he smiled, "Nah, I don't really believe any of that. He's just winding you up. Don't worry about it. He can't stand it if I have friends he can't buy off with a couple of mil."

She gawked. "He really does that?"

"What?"

"Buy off your friends?"

"Oh yes. You'd be surprised how easily friendship can be altered or broken with the exchange of six to seven or eight numbers from one bank account to the other. I'm surprised he's never tried to offer you money in the first place? Or has he?"

She dumbly shook her head.

"Any other threats?"

"He said," she cleared her throat. "He accused me of…well, all sorts of things. Told me to stay away from you because I endangered you."

"Yes," Lex said dryly. "You're a highly dangerous woman."

"Edge did say…"

"Edge is an asshole and I won't have him talk you into a guilt complex. The only thing I have to fear from you is that you'll uncover my hidden agenda, and that keeps me on my toes."

She looked away, not yet in the mood for flippancy. With an inward sigh, he prepared to defend himself. "What he said, about those cases," she started. "Edge, I mean. Was that the truth? Those awful things he mentioned—did you really commit them?"

"No," said Lex calmly, and at that moment he even convinced himself. "I didn't. Neither did my company. And that is why all his cases were thrown. Chloe, I'm no lawyer. If he had proof about some crime I was committing, do you really think I could make it disappear? My lawyers are pretty good, the best money can buy, and I have a lot of money. But if I killed people by experimenting on them, and there had been witnesses, do you really think I could keep my head out of the noose? I'm neither that ruthless nor that experienced in thwarting the law."

He watched her digest that, saw the tension drain away from her shoulders and felt something inside his own body relax as well. She bought it. For the time being. She was still his friend.

She smiled, nodded. "Ok." 

"So no more worries about anything Martin Edge said, ok? Nor about anything my father said. Trust me, he's not worth it."

"Then I won't," she said, and put her hand on his. "You've lost one IV."

"Yay!"

She laughed. Now the nervousness had left her face, her eyes were warm and rather loving. For one moment, he wondered if he could talk her into going down on him, right here in the hospital bed. She never had before, and it would SO improve this dreary day…

"Lex," Chloe said in a low voice, and he had to bite his tongue to keep from suggesting she'd just kneel between his legs and give it a try. _No! No! At least keep this one about friendship rather than sex!_ "Lex…I really need to…"

One of the guards tapped on the door. 

"What?" Lex barked.

"Mister Luthor? There's a woman here who wants to see you. A Miss Decan."

TBC


	18. Chapter 18

Hello all, and thanks for reviewing

Hello all, and thanks for reviewing! Too late to wish you a happy Easter, so not wishing you anything at all 

I so love the first seasons' Lionel. You just KNOW that he loves Lex, and that Lex loves him in return, because they'd do anything to avenge one another…but it only shows AFTER one of the two is almost killed. Their relationship is so twisted and wrong it makes me all happy inside. And yeah, you've only seen him through Chloe's eyes and Lex's eyes, so who knows, he might breed bunnies, or something, or knit socks for the poor in his spare time. Nobody knows what exactly goes on in his mind. Ahhh, Lionel…

By the bye, those in need of fluff, we're almost through the clouds of doom. So…keep on reading, the sun will start shining again soon.

**18: In which Lex considers blood and Chloe starts connecting the pieces**

"Valerie?" Lex asked, surprised. Only then he realized that he hadn't thought about her, or the kids, or the entire dreadful cancer business for a single moment since he'd been shot. "Yes," he said, pushing himself up a little, "yes let her in."

"Valerie?" asked Chloe—and then Lex had the immense gratification to witness an excellent and entirely unexpected display of female possessiveness. When Valerie entered the room, all high heels, 15 dernier tights, wide mouth and long dark hair Chloe drew up straight, which thinned her waist and thrust out her breasts, tossed her bangs out of her face and eyed the other woman with a certain hostility he found incredibly endearing. 

Whenever he fell in love, Lex himself was always violently jealous when any other male person was treated kindly by that current flame. He had never, as far as he could remember, seen that jealousy displayed by a woman on his behalf. It absolutely thrilled him to see it in Chloe.

"Lex," Valerie started, then stopped as she saw Chloe. "I'm really sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to interrupt. But this is the only time today I can leave the tower, and when I get out visiting hours will be over. I really need to speak to you."

Chloe's eyes flitted to the clock. It was a little past one. She wriggled in her chair but remained seated.

"Privately," Valerie said. This put Lex in a highly uncomfortable position. He wasn't sure Chloe should hear whatever it was Valerie wanted to tell him. On the other hand he was loath to send her away after all she'd done for him. He settled for helplessness, since that seemed to work so well on Chloe. 

"You don't need to go, if you don't want to, but…"

"It concerns the patients," Valerie inserted. "It won't take long, but I really need to consult Lex on a couple of things."

"That's ok," Chloe bristled. "I was just leaving." She cast the clock a chagrined glance.

"Thank you. I really am sorry." 

"It's no problem, really." She turned around and kissed Lex on the mouth. "I'll see you tomorrow, then?"

Now that was interesting. As was the way she sashayed out of the room, hips swerving, walking on those high heels as if she were born in them. If he'd been in a different situation, Lex would have whistled in appreciation.

"Your girlfriend?" Valerie guessed, when Chloe's heels were no longer audible. 

"Possibly."

"She behaved as if I were her rival."

"Aren't you?" 

"That depends on what it is she wants from you," she said with a lopsided smile.

_Sex against the window_, he thought. _Preferably with me, but somehow I guess anyone would do._ He smiled, leaving it to Valerie to interpret it as she saw fit. By the looks of it, she interpreted it the most improper way possible. She sat down on the chair Chloe had just vacated, crossed her legs and studied him, just like everyone did. 

_Hit me_, Lex thought. 

"You look better than I expected," she said, surprising him. Her face fell. "I only heard it on Christmas eve, when they showed it on TV..."

"Ah yes, Luthor Junior shot, comfort and joy for every person on earth; an extra heart-warming Christmas Special," Lex said sarcastically. "Did I look good on TV?"

"Noooo," Valerie said slowly. "Not really. There was no video material either, just a few pictures. They were rather gruesome. I heard that about twenty-five hundred people complained to Channel 4 and channel 3 for spoiling their festive mood and scaring their children."

"They did?" Lex asked delightedly. "Good!"

"The first time I saw those shots, before they said you were stable and doing well, I thought you were dead," she said quietly. "I was at the tower. I had the TV on, in my office with the sound muted. The children were watching cartoons with their parents."

"I'm sorry," Lex said, feeling guilty. There weren't all that many, but there were a few people who loved him, and he hadn't meant to give them a scare. Then he stiffened. "Jessica!"

"She didn't see the pictures," Valerie hastened to reassure him. "They never watch the news. Of course they did find out about you..." She unzipped her handbag, took out a fat envelope and handed it to him. "They send you this."

He opened it; it was filled with Get Well cards. Those children would be the death of him yet. He cleared his throat. "They're the ones who are dying. I should send _them_ cards."

"They like you, Lex," she said. "I wouldn't know why..." She smiled, a quick flash that faded almost immediately. "They see you as a kindred soul, and now you're bed-bound…Well."

"But Jessica?" he urged. "Is she alright? Her premonition came out, you know. Blood on the trees. She predicted it. And I lost my phone, so if she tried to call me, I couldn't tell her I was fine..."

"Jesse's fine. I do believe she called you, but only after we heard you were shot." She was still too serious.

"And Emmy? And Michael? You said you needed to speak to me. Are they alright?"

She sighed. "Emmy and Michael are. It's touch and go, but...yeah. No. We lost Tina."

"Tina?!"

"It was quite unexpected. She suddenly took a turn to the worse. Her and Jack's parents came by in the afternoon, and she was doing quite well, but she wouldn't eat, and..." she pressed her lips together. "She died this morning, at six."

"I'm sorry," said Lex. He felt the girl's death as a personal failure, even if he hadn't befriended her like Jessica and Ronny. He vividly recalled those small fingers stroking over and over the soft wool of his sweater. "I'm so sorry. And her brother? How's he doing?"

Valerie shrugged. "He's sad, of course. But he's holding up. I taught them well," she said with a wry smile. "Accept your loss and move on. He's a child, he'll cope. But his parents are devastated." 

"Of course they are. And with the boy still sick..."

She nodded. "That was another thing I wanted to talk about. Apparently, we're running out of blood. Your blood. The first thing I thought," she continued, "when I saw you on that picture looking as if someone had ritually slaughtered you," a hint of a smile briefly played around the corners of her mouth, "was _'We have to send every ounce of blood we still have locked up in here to the hospital and put as much of his old blood into him as possible_."

Lex gaped at her_. My blood. Of course. I've donated gallons of blood to LuthorCare. I could have tried to undo Amy's block by transfusing that blood into me. It might even have worked—no, it wouldn't have; it didn't work for the children either. But still… Guh.  
_  
"Good god," he said. "You're smarter than me."

"You seem surprised," she said, arching a brow.

"There aren't that many people that are smarter than me," he apologized. "However. You mentioned a shortage of blood. How critical is the situation? Are we in danger of running out of medicine?"

"It isn't that bleak yet," Valerie said. "We've got enough to keep going for at least another three, four months. But we still haven't been able to win the substance that accelerates your healing through chemical means."

"You do realize I won't be able to provide you with more of my blood?" He sneered. "At least none that would be of any possible use. I'm not healing anymore. My blood's as useless as their own."

"I gathered that," she said. "Besides, you can probably use it yourself. There couldn't have been much left of it. Still, if we don't find another way to cure this cancer we may find ourselves in a horrible drama in a few months. They're reacting very well to the treatment, but as we've seen with those children who were touched by Amy, take it away and it comes right back."

"First we need Amy herself back," Lex mused. "We don't even know if she's even alive. Emmy, Michael, and those other kids—I'm sorry, I didn't remember their names. They're on this other treatment now, aren't they? They're holding on."

"But barely. And Tina did not." She gazed at her watch. "I need to go in a couple of minutes. The kids have been through a storm of emotions, and with still half of the parents floored by the flu, keeping them busy's become a day task."

"How's Reese doing?"

"He's fine. He sends his regards and wishes you well—they all do, or would, if they knew I was here visiting you." She sighed. "But…that's all you can come up with as well? We need Amy back? I was hoping you'd have another brilliant idea, or another form of Smallville Rock we could experiment with…?"

Lex shook his head. "Unfortunately not. I gave all I had to LuthorCare."

"And you don't happen to have another stash of blood hidden away somewhere in a blood bank either?"

"If I had, I'd have mentioned it," Lex said irritably. "I don't usually go around distributing my blood to the masses."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to imply you were keeping things from LC. It's just…" She sighed. "We haven't lost a child for so long, and now little Tina. I guess I'm just not used to losing them anymore." She looked at her watch again. "I have to go. Michael's parents are coming by this afternoon, and I need to somehow convince them that they really shouldn't move their son to a room with more sunlight. It's hard to make up a reason he should stay in the dark without mentioning Jessica's ability."

"You'd better find something to convince them," Lex said, rubbing the scar on his temple. "Blood on the trees. I'm sure that the moment the sunlight touches his face, her prediction will become reality."

"We can hardly keep him locked up his entire life."

"No," Lex concurred. "But we can until he's stronger. She saw him dead because he was dying. Perhaps if not all the conditions are met, he'll throw over her prophesy. I sure hope so," he added in an undertone. When Valerie got up, he took her hand. "I'll see if I can think of another way to save them," he promised. "Any other way I can come up with. And if we need more personnel or specialists, tell Reese to speak to the executives and just hire them, no matter the costs. I got it covered."

"I will," she said, squeezing his fingers. "Thanks. You get better now."

"I will. Oh, will you thank the children for their cards? I'll try practicing to write with my left hand and send them a note. Until them…Just tell them thanks, will you? And say hi from me. Tell 'em to concentrate on healing and not to worry about me."

She smiled, the wide, warm smile he liked so much. "I'll make sure to do that." She bowed down and kissed the tip of his nose. As he raised his eyebrows she added, "I've learned not to tread where other people have put up 'don't walk on the grass' warnings."

"I have grass on my mouth?"

She grinned. "Seedlings, at least."

"Wow," he drawled, trying to mask the discomfort he was feeling. He wasn't usually that readable to people. "I've become a lawn. How remarkable."

"Was she the girl who was with you when it happened?" Lex nodded. "Then I guess you could do worse than be claimed as her lawn."

"I'm more of a 'private property' man," Lex said, and she laughed.

"Even private property will be trespassed at times." She gave his hand another squeeze. "Despite all your fences, walls and wire yours has been trampled on so much there's hardly any grass left. It really wouldn't be a bad idea to get someone in who protects the grounds for a bit. Sows some seedlings. You know."

"Are we discussing agriculture?" Lex wondered defensively. "If you need plants for your little garden I know just the place to order them."

Valerie sighed, then smiled again. "It's good to see you're doing better. I really should go now. If you'd get a phone I could call you to keep you up to date with anything that happens at the tower."

"A phone?" Lex salivated. "You can get a phone next to your bed?"

"Uh, yes. Didn't you know?"

"Nooooooooooo……." Lex drawled. He smiled. "I'll call you. Soon. And Jessica, if I can remember her number. Thank god, I'll be able to work again. I can move on! A phone! Why didn't anyone tell me that before?"

"I think," Valerie said, "exactly because of the way you're reacting to the possibility of getting one."

"If I can get a phone I might be able to get my laptop too!" Lex said in rapture. "Do you think they have a network around I can either break into or access?"

"Goodbye, Lex. Do take it easy."

"Goodbye, Valerie." Lex had planted his thumb on the 'call nurse' button and watched her go with an elated expression on his face. A phone! The end to his endless ennui! Business! What a good thing he had a head for numbers; he was quite sure he knew all the important numbers by heart…

Once he'd ordered a phone from Nurse Number One, he pondered the problem of the cancer treatment. Tina, he resolved, was the last child that would die of Cradle Cancer. Poor thing. He hadn't even been able to send her something Cashmere for Christmas. He wouldn't accept another death. But how to solve that problem?

His own blood was useless, and so, apparently, was his old blood. It helped, but it didn't cure, it only kept the disease from spreading.

The Kryptonite wouldn't provide any miracles either, nor would any other, more standard medical means.

Kryptonite…

_There is one way_, he realized as he cradled his chin in fingers still warm with fever and Valerie's touch. Only one thing that would cure them absolutely, he was certain of it, even though he didn't have any hard proof. The only problem was that he was unable to obtain that solution, at least not the way he was now.

But that, he thought, might change yet. Another subject to occupy his mind. Between that and the phone and Chloe's enchanting reaction to Valerie, he had more than enough to consider.

_That, _Chloe told herself as she punished her keyboard, _was a reaction unworthy of a cool, poised, professional woman._

But god damn it, where did he find those women? Did he have a selection procedure for all the women he met? No shaking hands with Lex Luthor unless over five foot seven, brown eyes and dark hair?

So what? What's wrong with being petite and blonde?

She punched the space bar so hard it rattled. No fashion show had ever been described in shorter, more snappish sentences before. Chloe was angry at herself for being jealous, because there was nothing to be jealous about, and she'd never been jealous before. For all she cared Lex lined up the entire female populace of Metropolis, picked out all the brunettes and tested out all the positions of the Karma Sutra on them. They only were friends, after all, Lex and Chloe.

And how could she be sure he was sleeping with this Valerie anyway?

She was, though. As sure as if Miss Decan had stripped in the middle of the room to 'New York, New York'. This Valerie was exactly the kind of woman Lex fell for again and again. What she wasn't sure about was why she wanted to smile into those pretty deer-brown eyes and punch them blue.

Taking a moment to distance herself from her computer (and deleting a line that was downright insulting to the model who'd been showing that dress), she frowned at herself and forced herself to analyze her feelings. (Part of her wanted to run up the stairs and wail out her misery to Lois, who was also back on the job and cursing Clark, who was off until the second of January. But if she did that, Lois would probably pick up a shotgun and finish what Edge had started, and Chloe hadn't gone through all that trouble to save Lex only to have her cousin murder him.)

She'd like to think that what she was feeling was a friendly, maybe sisterly concern, a desire to protect Lex from his godawful choice in women.

That wasn't it. What she had felt when that guard had announced Miss Decan and Lex had said 'Valerie' in that kind of way had been a bit (just a tiny little bit) like the way she'd felt when she'd told an unconscious Clark that if he'd only look past her mask of the perfect friend, he'd find the perfect woman to love, and he'd replied by muttering Lana's name.

A bit like a slap on the cheek, really. Painful, but very educational.

The thing was, she hadn't been aware she'd felt this way about Lex. Unlike with Clark, when Lex had told her that he didn't want to be anything more than friends, maybe lovers once in a while, she had wholeheartedly agreed and congratulated both him and herself on a perfect relationship.

And she'd read about him in glossies. Whenever some well-done bimbo orated about Lex's amazing skills, she sagely nodded, put on her 'Been there, done that' T-shirt and wore a knowing smirk to work. She'd never cared about him sleeping around before—but no, that wasn't it. It wasn't him sleeping with other women. She really didn't mind that—that had been part of the deal, after all. Total freedom. It was that level of joy upon seeing her he'd displayed. She'd thought that had been solely hers.

"So what has that Decan woman done for you to make you so happy then, huh?" she asked aloud. "Did she give you her coat when you were going into shock? Hold off your evil dad so you could dry your tears? Puke her guts out because you'd bled all over her? What's so fucking special about her, then? _Bastard_."

"So what's he done this time?" Lois asked.

Chloe jumped. "Lois! I didn't hear you coming!"

Lois held up a sneakered foot. "Nobody of real authority is around. I was planning to go running." She pulled up a chair. "Looks like I'm going to do some counseling instead. Why were you abusing your poor keyboard as if you were that German World of Warcraft kid?"

"As if I were WHO?"

Lois waved her hand. "Youtube. Gotta love it. Don't evade my question. Did he cheat on you? From his hospital bed? You gotta give the man credit for something: he's only half alive but he still manages to hurt you. Should I go and beat him up for you?"

Chloe smiled and blinked away a half-formed tear. "I don't think that'll be necessary. Besides I doubt security would let you through with a baseball bat sticking out of the back of your jeans."

Lois cracked her knuckles. "I don't need a baseball bat to beat him up. All I need to do is pull out his IV and he'll shrivel up like a cucumber."

"Down, Lois." Somehow, the mention of the IV took away all her desire for vengeance. She sighed. Great, now she felt even more stupid. Lois spoke the magic word.

"Coffee? It's time for a break anyway."

Fifteen minutes later they sat in overstuffed chairs in a dark corner of the nearest Starbucks rip-off coffee shop, sipping from pint-sized moccaccinos with cream, sprinkles and extra caramel swirls. There was a fair amount of customers, the music was on, and somehow it felt a lot more secluded than the half-empty Daily Planet building.

"So tell me," Lois persisted. "Why are you so upset? At Christmas wild horses couldn't keep you in Smallville, and now you're keyboardcidal. What's he done to you?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing." She sighed. "That's the problem. He's done nothing wrong. I'm just…I don't know. Heh. I think I'm jealous. And that sucks, because I don't have any reason to be jealous, but I am nevertheless."

"So he did sleep with someone else?"

"I don't know. Maybe. Yeah."

"So dump him!"

"Lois, I'm not even involved with him!"

Lois snorted. She was always getting her food on her face and this time the towering pile of whipped cream had left traces on her forehead. "Chlo, honey, you're as involved as if he were your personal crime scene. I mean, everybody I know agrees that the man's a slug, but you fly into protective rages whenever I so much as mention his name."

Chloe dabbed at Lois' forehead with a napkin. "That's because you're always railing at him for all kinds of things. I know him. I like him; he's my friend."

"Friends don't make you cry."

"Actually, that's exactly what they make you do," Chloe said in a flash of morose insight. She licked at the cone of cream. "If I had no friends I wouldn't have any heartache either. Or do you think I like it when you keep telling me someone I consider a friend is the human version of the plague?"

Lois stared at her, eyes wide. "I'm sorry," she said at last. "I hadn't thought of it that way."

"I figured that. It's ok. I know you're only worried about me." She poked a finger into the cream, dragged it up and licked it clean. "I really do like him, you know."

"Well duh. I can't imagine why, but…Oh. Sorry. I'm doing it again. You know what? Tell me why you like him. Maybe then I can reign in my violent dislike of the despicable creature and…Um…So, what's likable?"

Chloe laughed. "At the moment, I don't think he's likable at all."

"Oh, good," Lois grinned, and somehow managed to smear cream into her eyebrow.

"…But usually…he just makes me laugh."

"Laugh?" One dark and one white-spotted eyebrow crawled all the way up to Lois' hairline. "Lex Luthor makes you laugh? Wow. Now THAT is a quality I'd never think to connect to him."

"It's true, though," Chloe argued. "He's really funny. As in, he totally cracks me up sometimes."

"Huh," puffed Lois. "You wouldn't say."

"But that's just it," Chloe said. "You'd never say he was so hilariously funny, or so sweet and considerate, and weird and cute and messed up if you didn't know him."

"I know about the messed up part," Lois muttered, but Chloe had just taken a gulp of coffee and didn't hear her. "Can't see where the cuteness comes in."

"He can cook," Chloe said.

"So can Perry. Doesn't make him cute."

"He has a portable bug catcher."

"That's not cute, that's deranged paranoia."

"He drove me home after I got myself splashed with ink during that conference. And got me the entire transcription of everything I'd missed because of that."

"And got into your pants for his trouble. Seems like a fair trade to me."

"Lois!"

"As far as I know your whole Luthor-conversion started after that particular incident," Lois said. "From which we can conclude that he either brainwashed you, or that he's such an outrageously great…" she silenced herself by taking a huge swallow from her cup. Her eyes flicked back to Chloe's face, who felt a blush rise from her navel. "Is he?" Lois asked. "Good? Big?"

"Mm."

"How good? Good enough to forgive him for all those horrible things he's done and is still doing?"

"That's got nothing to do with it."

"Then what does?" When Chloe shrugged and went back to her cream, Lois put her own cup down on the table and rubbed her sticky hands. "Right, so, instead, let me tell you what _I_ see. I see a man who wouldn't stop at anything to get what he wants, be it politically, socially, in business and in relations. I see an arrogant frat-boy who looks down his nose at everybody, and uses everyone he knows, including his friends, to further his own career. Oh, I'll give you that he has a certain charm. He can probably be very pleasant if he wants to. Never felt the need to show that side to _me_, though. He…"

"He's brave," Chloe interrupted her softly, again remembering the cock of his chin before the final shot. "And he'd sacrifice his own life for mine."

"Well, yeah! I mean, he's the one who was kidnapped with a particular reason in mind, wasn't he?"

Chloe's eyes shot back to her cousin's face. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," Lois said, looking up from her fingers, "that if _you're_ the object of homicidal rage, and not your unfortunately dragged-in companion, it's pretty easy to draw fire away from her. Edge wanted _him_ dead, right, not you. What would shooting you accomplish for him? He wanted Lex. So he shot Lex. I don't mean to belittle your experience, I really don't, but I don't think you've been in any worse danger than freezing to death in the forest."

Chloe shook her head. Lois was right, but at the same time she was spectacularly wrong. "You don't understand."

"Oh," Lois said airily, "I think I do. Shall I let you in on a little secret?"

"What's that?"

Lois leaned towards her, almost touching her lips to Chloe's ear. "What _I _think," she whispered, "is that you're in love with him."

Chloe reeled back. "No," she protested. "No, I'm not. That was the whole point: we don't love each other. We're friends!"

"Uhuh," Lois' tongue—which was really abnormally long, Chloe suddenly thought—licked all the way around her cup, gathering any remaining caramel from the rim. "And that's why you're sitting here blubbering over his infidelity."

"It's not infidelity, it's more like…"

"Tomato, tomahto."

Chloe glared at her. "I'm not in love with Lex."

"Then what, exactly, is the problem?"

"I…" Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She began to dig it up. "I don't know! It's just…Gaah! I don't know!" She didn't recognize the number. "Chloe Sullivan speaking."

"Chloe!" Lex cheered tinnily into her ear, and her heart gave a hard, painful throb. "I've got a phone! Would you believe it? You can rent a phone to have beside your bed! Did you know about that? Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't anybody tell me? Anyway, I have a phone now. I just wanted to give you the number. Do you have a pen and a piece of paper?" Chloe hunted around for a pen and wrote the number down on the back of the coffee bill. While she noted down the number, she was holding a queer little internal monologue with herself, which got queerer with every word.

_Lex. You really hurt my feelings this morning by…doing absolutely nothing wrong. Why aren't you aware of my deep disappointment…which is unfounded, and which I hopefully didn't show at all? How can you be so cheerful while you made me, well, not quite cry, for no reason at all?_

"Got it?" Lex asked, and she said that yes, she did. "Uh," he said, finally noticing something odd about her curt answers. "Are you alright? I'm sorry if Valerie made you feel unwelcome. She's under a lot of stress."

"No, that's ok." _It wasn't! It isn't! I'm under a lot of stress too!_

"She's from LuthorCare. One of the kids died this morning. A little girl. Valerie's their councilor. And there are…complications. With the treatment."

Ok. Right. She now officially needed to buy a whip and beat herself over the back. Embarrassment and guilt heated up her cheeks. _Sometimes, _she thought, _I think I'm lower than Lois claims Lex is. And that's pretty fucking base. _ "Oh," she said dumbly. "I'm sorry. That's awful."

"Yeah," he said slowly. "It is. We really need Amy back. I just remembered, how far have you come with that list I sent you? Has anything come out?"

Chloe looked at her cousin. "I don't know. Lois, has that list from LuthorCare…Did it finish processing?"

"Is that Lex?" Lois asked. She leaned towards the little phone. "You leave her alone, you pig!"

Lex chuckled. "Ahhh, you're with _Lo_is," he drawled. "Do tell her hi from me, will you?"

"What's he saying?" Lois asked aggressively.

"I don't think I will, if you don't mind," Chloe said to Lex.

"Is he being an asshole again?"

"Is she talking to me?" Lex wondered. He began to cough, and Chloe used the respite to glare at her cousin.

"Would you mind not having a phone conversation through me with Lex while ignoring me?"

Lois blinked. "Huh…what?"

"What about that list?"

"Oh. Oh, yeah!" she slapped her forehead—pretty hard, the sound rang through the entire room. "That was why I came down in the first place! To tell you it had finished rattling. And then I wanted to go running but instead I HAD TO GO AND COMFORT YOU BECAUSE THAT ASSHOLE HAD YOU ALL DOWN AND DEPRESSED." She all but screamed the last part in the general direction of the phone. Like the slap, her voice resounded beautifully in the cafeteria.

Chloe loved her cousin. She really did. But sometimes she recalled how quiet and peaceful things had been without her around, and wished fervently for a Lois-free environment. She grinned sheepishly at the people staring at her.

Lex, as well, had heard Lois' subtle rebuke. "What is she talking about?" he asked, still hoarse with coughing. "Were you…"

"Nothing! Nothing at all." She held up a warning finger when Lois would have corrected her. _I was just being a jealous bitch, that's all. Move along, nothing to see._ "According to Lois the list's finished processing. I'll have a look at it later."

"Call me if you find anything?" The triumph in his voice made her laugh.

"Sure," she said.

"Call me ifyou don't find anything too?"

"You're really happy with your shiny new phone, aren't you?"

He snorted. "It isn't new. It isn't even wireless. I swear it's made of bakelite. It's big and slow and cumbersome and it smells like disinfectant—but yeah, I hug it and whisper sweet nothings into its receiver…Listen, I have to go and call China, now, or my deal will be off."

"Ok. Speak to you later."

Lex said goodbye and hung up. Chloe smiled at her phone. Next to her, Lois gushed an exasperated sigh. "I should have gone running," she muttered disgustedly.

Chloe had been staring at the cross-referenced list for over an hour, and as of yet she had not found anything of interest in either the list itself, the relations and family list, or Clark's notes to the first part of the list. Of the over 1700 employees, about 50 had family members either originating or residential in Smallville. Not much of a shock, considering that Metropolis was the nearest big city close to Smallville. 32 of those people had been in contact with the police once or more. 40 times for speeding, 3 for flipping the bird at the sheriff, 1 petty theft, 3 damage to properties and 16 red-light ignoring. Not exactly the beginning of a kidnapping career, as Clark has commented.

Without Chloe knowing, he must have spent quite some time going through the information. His notes were quite impressive. She moaned thinking about the amount of time she could be spending poring over these rows and rows of names reading and digesting them at ordinary, non-super speed. Sighing, she traced her finger down her hard copy.

Neils, J.C. City of birth : Smallville. Date of birth: 11 September 1964

Neill, H. City of birth : Smallville. Date of birth: 01 July 1971

Neill, R.E. City of birth : Smallville. (not related)

Nelson, M. City of birth : Smallville.

Neltar, M.

Neltastikov, C.B.J.

She yawned. If she'd know what exactly she was looking for, she might feel usefully engaged, but she didn't, not at all. They were just names. Lots of them.

Nix. Norton. Opec. D'Or. Ovarice. "Sounds like ovary. What a piss-poor name."

Patterson. Peters. Potter. Richards. Rosswell.

"Wait." She dragged her weary eyes back up the list, read the last four names again. "Potter. G.T. Potter. Why's that ring a bell? Do I know a Potter?" She didn't know anyone named Potter, she was sure of it. Why, then, did the surname of an imaginary juvenile wizard make her reporter-antennae quiver?

"Potter. G.T. Potter…No, it wasn't G.T. It was something else…" She typed in G.T. Potter in the cross-reference list, hoping for some background information. What she got was his age (52), his profession (it only said Scientist), a home address in Baskville, a small town about half an hour's drive from Metropolis, the name of his wife (Tracy Cunningham) and the names of his two sisters and brother(Mary Potter and Janice Farlane-Potter, and Mark Potter).

"No, no, no!" Chloe raged, combing her hands through her hair and thoroughly upsetting her hairdo. "This isn't leading me anywhere!"

She went to get a cup of coffee, her twelfth this day after the moccaccino with Lois, and went through the other names, but she kept coming back to Potter. There was something about the name Potter that kept nagging at her brain.

"So where did I see the name Potter?" she asked herself. She tried to sit back and force herself to relax but she was too jittery with caffeine to even sit still, so she got up and paced through the almost empty room.

Where had she seen that name? She didn't know anyone with that name but she had heard it—no, READ it somewhere. It had been quite recent. She'd read it somewhere.

"But where? And why does thinking about it make me feel frustrated—apart from the very obvious reason that I can't remember where I read it?" She prowled through the rows of deserted desks, uprighting a fallen picture here, tidying an uneven stack of paper there, muttering Potter, Potter under her breath. After three rounds her feet started to hurt so she took off her boots, shrunk three inches and continued more comfortably. Lois was right, without any figures of authority around to tell her off for walking barefoot, she could do and wear or not wear whatever she wanted.

"I read the name Potter in Smallville," she reminded herself. "When was I last in Smallville? When Lex was ill. I went to see Lex because he was supposed to give me an interview. Instead, he used me as a pillow and I watched High Plane's Drifter. Then I went to bed and read a few minutes before going to sleep…" She moaned. Had she read the name Potter in one of Lex's books? Was it an author? That would be so…

"No." she took a turn around a desk, absentmindedly poked a finger in a withering plant and determined it needed water. "No, it wasn't at Lex's. I did read it, but it wasn't an author, it was…Aargh!" She had reached the windows and with the windows the window sill. A half-empty watering can in the shape of an elephant shone like a very fake emerald in the last rays of the afternoon sun. She picked it up and walked back to the plant.

"I read it in Smallville when I was there for my interview with Lex," she told the plant as it hungrily sucked up the trickle she poured into it. Were there any other languishing plants about? Yes. There were. Nobody cared about those poor things when holiday was beckoning. "What did I do that day?" she asked a drooping fuchsia. "I met up with Caroline. I had coffee at the Talon. I saw…what's his name. The wannabe biker. Voight. I was bored. Uhuh." She spotted another plant and approached it on silent feet. "I read the Torch." She stopped. Put down the watering can on someone's desk. "I read the Torch," she repeated, "and in it was an article by a guy named Potter. No. It wasn't BY Potter. He DESCRIBED someone named Potter."

She closed her eyes in perfect reporter bliss. Horns resounded and a shaft of light broke through the ceiling and basked her in holy light. Blindly, she drifted back to her desk, located her bag, took out her lovely little Nokia, phone of memories. In a pink haze of exultation, she dialed Clark's number.

Because Clark really needed to know how amazingly GOOD she was.

No, she wasn't good. She was stupid! How could she not have seen this link? Why had it taken her so long to remember this highly significant tidbit?

Clark picked up after a ring or three. She didn't give him the time to ask her what she wanted but said, "Ok, repeat after me: Chloe, you're a moron."

Clark was silent for a few seconds. Then he said, "Chloe, you're a moron."

"Thank you."

"Uh…You're welcome. Why are you a moron?"

"Do you remember that saying about Mohammed and the mountain?"

"Yeeeeeeaaaahhhhh?" The poor guy had NO idea what she was talking about. But that was ok, she just needed to blow off some steam.

"Well, we've been so busy looking for Mohammed we totally overlooked the fact that we're standing ON TOP of the mountain."

"Riiiight," said Clark. "And…Mohammed? Is he stuck under the mountain or something?"

"No," Chloe said. "Mohammed is in Smallville. Where else? Look, I'll call you back, ok. I have to go and find something out."

"Uh, ok…"

She hung up, and the moment she put down the cell Clark's flabbergasted reaction had reinstalled her feeling of divine bliss.

_I remember. _She squealed silently. _I am SO good! The Torch sucked, the writing was uninspired, the editing made me puke. The only interesting story was about a young woman gradually disintegrating, and it was total sensationalist crap, badly spelled, horribly researched. Thank you, dear author, for making me notice the total shit you'd produced! That disintegrating woman…her name was Nelly Potter._

She went back to her computer, clicked on the link leading to the background information of Mark Potter. He was married to a woman called Shelly and had a daughter called Nelly. There was no address, but Chloe didn't need an address, not yet, at least. She knew they lived in Smallville.

It explained everything. Why Amy was taken, how she was taken, how anyone had known why to take her.

Chloe's fingers were shaking as she fished the note with Lex's number from the recesses of her bag. She really should do more research—find out where they lived, see if Nelly still lived at home with her parents in Smallville…dozens of things, but first she needed to tell someone, someone else than Clark. She needed to be PRAISED by someone else than Clark.

She pressed the green horn button.

"Lex Luthor." He sounded tired and hoarse after what had probably been an entire afternoon of phone conversation.

"Lex," she started, and she had to get up and pace again. Her heart was pounding in her eyeballs. _Note to self: drink decaf tonight. _"You asked me to call you if I found something."

"Yes?" Still hoarse, but immediately alert.

"I found something!!" she shrieked, and performed an impromptu Indian war dance around a chair.

"Tell me!"

Chloe took a deep breath. "I know where Amy is. She's in Smallville—I mean why wouldn't she be in Smallville, the disguised ground zero of ultimate freakage in Kansas? Where ELSE could she be but in Smallville? Lex, do you remember when you were sick and I came to Smallville to take your interview? Before I went to see you I was at the Talon and there was an old copy of the Torch lying about, and I read it, and it was so godawful it almost made me cry, but in that copy there was a story about a young woman, a meteor freak, who was apparently slowly losing substance, evaporating you might say. I didn't really think about it at the time, I mean, it was written so badly and I had other things on my mind, and I've seen it all before anyway, but I was going through your list right now and one of your employees, a scientist called Potter, he has a brother, Mark Potter, and Mark Potter is the father of that girl! Are you still following me?"

"Yes," Lex said tightly. "Go on."

"She must be in Smallville, Lex. With that Potter girl. Apparently Nelly Potter, as far as I can remember from that article, was slowly turning into some kind of ghost. The article raved about how cool it was that she could walk through walls, but that it unfortunately also meant that she was literally disappearing into thin air. Now, my theory is that G.T. Potter, your scientist, found out that Amy could block the effects of the meteorites, told his brother, and had Nelly kidnap Amy herself! I mean, if she could walk through walls, maybe she could take other people as well? We've had power-sharing freaks before, right? And as long as Amy didn't block her, she'd be able to take Amy with her. You still with me?"

"All the way," said Lex. "You're a genius. I should've hired you instead of that fool Tippitt. It makes perfect sense. And because he…he's…hang on a m-moment…"

Chloe jerkily caffeined through the room while Lex took a moment to cough his lungs out. She was probably upsetting him way past the level of excitement than was healthy for him, but she didn't care.

Neither, it seemed, did Lex. "Ok," he rasped, voice almost entirely destroyed, and with some sort of high squeak in each exhalation, "I'm still here. Bring on the oxygen. Right, Amy. I don't think I've ever met Potter but if he's a scientist he probably works on floor 26 or maybe 25. They have level clearance for most other floors. That means he'd be able to access the room where we keep the treatment and THAT means…"

"That Amy's still alive," Chloe said.

"And is probably doing relatively well. She'll have missed only one radiation therapy session so far; they only have one every 8 days, and if she could continue with the rest of the treatment, she should be pretty much ok."

"That's good. The only thing I don't understand—if we're correct, that is, if I'm not making a complete fool of myself—is why he didn't bring Amy back. How long did it take you to start growing hair? A few hours? If Amy's blockage works, why not take her back and…"

"Assuming that you're correct, and let's do that for the moment," Lex said, "Amy blocked this Nelly…it's Nelly, right? Nelly's ability to become ethereal. You don't have that copy of the Torch lying around somewhere, do you?"

"No, I don't. I don't think 'ethereal' is the word you're looking for, though. More like 'oozable'."

"It doesn't matter. If Nelly was the one to get Amy out of the Tower, and that really is the only way I see possible, since she was taken from the 24th floor, the moment she lost that skill, it became impossible to bring her back the same way. It's…damn it, one moment please."

The sound muted, but Chloe could still hear Lex quite clearly. "No," he said to another person, probably some poor nurse, "I don't have time for that at the moment. I'll eat it later."

Unintelligible protest.

"Let me take care of my strength, shall we? Now, if you'll excuse me…"

Chloe laughed. She had by now worn a hole in the toes of her pantyhose but she really couldn't be bothered.

"Right," Lex said with a remnant of annoyance.

"They want you to eat?"

"They want me to do many things. Amy."

"She must still be in Smallville."

"Yes."

"I just don't know where. The program wouldn't give me Mark Potter's address."

"I think we can remedy that," Lex said dryly.

"Yeah?"

"The phone book? Look for the name of Potter?"

"Oh," Chloe laughed sheepishly. "Yeah, I guess that would work…"

Of course the online Smallville phone book was down, so Chloe had to be mediaeval and first find the physical book (which, since she was at the Daily Planet, was not as hard as if she'd been working somewhere else) and then browse through the Ps of Smallville until she'd found the right one. Apparently there were five Potter families living in Smallville. Two had first names starting with M.

She called Lex again. "I've got two options."

"Glad to hear it," Lex wheezed.

She grimaced. "Uh, you ok?"

"They're cutting off my phone at ten!"

She tried to find a connection between his physical state and the cutting off of his phone, then swallowed a grin. He was just being indignant. Probably threw a nice little temper tantrum.

"They claim it's to ensure the rest of the patient," Lex raged in that same breathless whisper. "It's only reconnected at seven A.M. Do they have any idea what not having a line to the world outside does to me?"

Chloe laughed. "Calm down. You did without one for almost four days."

"How cruel to take it away again!"

"You're probably supposed to go to sleep at ten."

"I don't want to go to sleep at ten."

"The way you're sounding you should go to sleep right away," Chloe teased. "Did you eat your dinner like a good boy?"

Lex grumbled something she couldn't quite understand. Then, he collected himself. "So, did you call the police yet?"

"The police? Lex, you know just as well that Metropolis police doesn't know what to do with Smallville freak-related crimes."

"I do. But the problem is that Smallville police doesn't know what to do with Smallville freak-related crimes either."

"Exactly."

Lex was silent for a moment. She gave him a moment to remember her old Smallville M.O., wondering if he would. He did, and sighed. "Clark?" he asked resignedly.

"Well, he IS in Smallville at the moment, and he usually gets things like these done successfully…"

"Yeeeeeeesssss…"

"I could go an investigate myself but it'll take me three hours to get there. And," she added, throwing a glance outside, "it's snowing again. I'm sending Clark."

"Boss-lady speaks," Lex said sarcastically. He was probably really pissed-off he couldn't waltz in himself and relieve the Potters of their house guest.

"Damn right," Chloe said. "You'll just have to be patient. If I'm right, you'll find out in due time. If Clark hurries, I might be able to fill you in before ten—before you go beddy-bye."

"I hate you," Lex informed her bitterly.

"I love you too, sweetie," she purred back. "You take care now, hear ya?"

"Go and call the farm boy," Lex growled.

"Will do."

"And Chloe?"

She smiled. There wasn't a trace of anger left in his voice. "Yeah?"

"You're a pretty damn good researcher. Whether you're right or not."

"Thanks," Chloe said. "I'll talk to you later, ok?"

She looked at the clock. Somehow, more than two hours had slipped by; it was past seven. That might explain her lightheadedness; she hadn't eaten anything since one.

_Right. First we call Clark, then we have a quick snack._ She dialed his number.

He picked up with a muffled "Yeah?" sounding a little ragged and curt. So, either Lana was pinned beneath him on the bed, or they'd had another fight and she was standing on the other side of the room in a huff.

"Can you do something for me?"

"What? Now?" She was probably pinned underneath him.

Chloe grinned. "Preferably yes, but I guess it could wait one hour." After all, Clark had stood Lana up (or postponed a good make-up session) to save the innocent too often already. If Chloe was right and Amy was with one of the two Potter families in Smallville, one hour more or less wouldn't make a difference either.

"Oh," he sounded relieved. Relieved. So maybe they'd had a fight after all, and he wanted to make up to get some. "Yeah, sure. What is it?"

"I need you to go to visit a certain Mister M. Potter."

"Potter." He sounded mystified. "Does this have to do with our Smallvillian Mohammed?"

"What??" Lana's voice whispered—definitely pinned against the mattress.

"Bingo," said Chloe. "Can you make it within an hour?"

"I think I could," Clark said dryly. "It's what you want me to do after I've visited Mister Potter that might cost me more time. Is he the one who kidnapped Amy?"

"_What_?" hissed Lana.

"I think so." She gave him a summarized version of her grand theory, including her doubt in the local police force. Clark immediately concurred. So did Lana. Chloe could hear her reasoning on the other end of the line: "That poor girl! We should go and get her right away! Here's your shirt. Where'd you leave my jeans?"

"Uhhh," Chloe giggled. "Too much info."

"You deserve it," Clark grumbled. "I should give you a touch by touch report for disturbing my…"

"Whoa, there, champ! I don't do Candlelight."

There was the rustling of bodies putting on their clothes, jeans zipping and shoes tapping on wood. "Ok," Clark said. "We're set. You said there were two Potters? Can you give me their addresses?" Chloe supplied the street names and numbers. "Right then. I'll give you a call later, ok? Just…don't call me. I might need to do some sneaking. Oh. What's she look like? This Amy?"

"Do you call yourself a reporter?" Chloe scoffed. "Didn't you see her picture on TV and in the papers?"

"Chloe. I was off watching football games and doing interviews with people that get off on copying women's bare bellies. I really can't remember her face. Wasn't she Asian?"

"She's bald."

"Ah." Clark fell silent for a few seconds. "I knew I was missing something. Bald little girl. That, uh, shouldn't be all that hard to find."

"My hero," Chloe mocked. It was beginning to become a habit.

"Stuff it, Sullivan," Clark said. "Be grateful I'm willing to hunt for small sick children in the dead of night…"

"It's barely seven thirty!"

"…while I'm on vacation, because you can't be bothered to drive a lousy three hours to get here and do it yourself."

"Huh."

"I'll call you the moment I know more, ok?"

"I'm not letting my cell out of my sight," Chloe promised. "Good luck!"

"Thanks," Clark said, and disconnected.

TBC


	19. Chapter 19

It's going more slowly, but it does keep coming, for the time being…J

It's going more slowly, but it does keep coming, for the time being…

As always, thanks for the reviews! Thanks Deb. I do my best. I always kind of see them in my head and listen to them, and that makes it easy to write them. Em…there might be more Lionel. There SHOULD be more Lionel, I'm just not sure if I can fit him in…naaahhh, I will. I love the MB. He'll return. ColleenJoy, yeah, Clark's being a bit overeager as a research monkey for Chloe, isn't it? But I noticed that during the show, Clark's always mooning over Lana…but he drops her every single time someone else might possibly be in trouble. Every single time! So why not when making out?  He's an idiot!

Everybody else…thanks as well!

Nineteen: In which Lex and Clark play metaphysical tennis

Some people in the grip of tension become nauseous and cannot get as much as a mouthful of milk down their throats. Chloe was not one of those fortunate souls. When tension mounted, Chloe started chewing. It didn't really matter on what, food, gum, her hair, a cord from her coat; as long as it kept her jaws busy.

At the Kent farm, while awaiting exam results, she'd had apple-devouring sessions, cookie-gobbling afternoons, and once, since there hadn't been anything else at the time, radish-nibbling hours. She'd thoughtlessly snarfed down two pounds of radishes, and still the thought of red-and-white bulbs made her feel a little sick.

She had long since abandoned the small eatery where she'd had her meal, knowing that she wouldn't be able to resist ordering seconds and thirds of the excellent blueberry pie if she kept sitting at that particular table. Instead, she'd visited the local supermarket, bought a cucumber and four apples and now sat munching low-fat and contentedly on her own couch.

She watched the eight o' clock news with her cell clutched in her left hand while using her right to shove pieces of vegetable and fruit into her mouth, and cursed Lana for wanting to go along with Clark. If she hadn't felt the need to go along and rescue the kid, Clark would probably just have run and fetched Amy within a couple of minutes. Now they had to take some horrendously slow traveling device. Like Lana's SUV, or Clark's truck.

Half past eight. Chloe had watched the horrors in third world countries without blinking an eye. Normally the people in Sudan made her feel guilty and ready to go and collect money to aid the victims of war. Now they made her thirsty. Still with her phone in hand, she went to the kitchen, opened a can of orange juice and took it back with her to drink in front of the TV.

She zapped through a rerun of Lost, watched fifteen minutes of yet another Clint Eastwood movie before deciding Clint was not what she needed at the moment, tried to amuse herself with a bit of Leslie Nielsen, gave up and stared blindly at a truly horrible scene on Animal Planet (Good god, and those meerkats looked so sweet! How could they do such terrible things to each other!).

When her phone finally rang at exactly ten past nine, she almost dropped it, and juggled it like a hot potato for two more rings before she could answer it—or rather, yell the name of the caller. "Clark!?"

"I've got her."

"You do?!"

"I do." Clark sounded very self-satisfied. "She's in the back seat with Lana. She was at the very first address you gave me."

"Why'd it take you so long, then? It's taken you ages! Did you forget to call, or something?"

"I did not!" Clark said. "We've only just left Smallville. No, they were having dinner when we arrived. With Amy. Lana and I looked through the window—they had the curtains drawn but I…uh…well, let's say that we could see inside. The girl was sitting with them at the table. She's doing pretty well, by the way."

"And Nelly?"

"Cured. And that was their big problem. Say, Chloe, how many people know that you figured out Nelly Potter abducted Amy?"

"Just you," Chloe said. "And Lana, and me. And Lex."

"Lex."

"Yeah, him too, since it concerns him most of all. Why?"

Clark hesitated. She could hear a muted conversation between two high voices come from somewhere else in the car. "Dr. Potter didn't mean any harm," Clark finally said. "And neither did Mister Potter. His daughter was dying, and there was nothing he could do. Or any doctor."

"How'd she become a freak?"

"I don't know. Some meteors in the ground? In their well? They have a well in their back yard. Who knows? I didn't ask. Maybe she's been able to do this ever since she was born, only now things went bad. Apparently it was pretty gross, with her losing bits of herself….Anyway, when Dr. Potter found out about Amy's ability, he knew he wanted to 'borrow' her for a while. You were right, he let Nelly pick her up in the bathroom. When she touches people, they take over her traits for a few seconds. She oozed Amy right through the cracks in the mortar and down a drain pipe. Nelly's dad picked them up in his car, and the same evening Dr. Potter brought Amy's medicine so she wouldn't get worse. And Amy's blocked Nelly's meteor freak-power, and she's doing fine now. But they'd forgotten about one thing."

"They still had to bring Amy back."

"Right. That's the reason why they waited so long with taking her back to LC Tower. Despite what Dr. Potter had seen in the other children, they were still more or less expecting it wouldn't work, so they didn't think up a proper plan what to do if Amy was successful. It did work, and then they didn't know what to do. They were still thinking about a convincing method to get the girl back without exposing themselves. And that's what I'm thinking about too, now," he added. "I don't want the Potters to go to jail. They're good people, really."

_They selfishly endangered the lives of several very sick children,_ Chloe thought. But she remained silent since Clark was still speaking. Also…maybe the Potters didn't know about the after effects of Amy's blockage on the other kids. And well, she guessed that if she'd had a daughter, and that daughter was slowly turning into a puddle of goo, she'd do everything to stop the process too.

"Neither does Amy," Clark continued his defense of the Potters. "She's quite an extraordinary girl. I think she really liked her stay outside the hospital."

"Did they just give her to you?" Chloe asked. "They didn't hide her?"

"Oh yes, they tried. But…uh…"

"You saw through the door and pointed her out?"

"Yes." She could hear his grin through the line. "And when they found out we just wanted her back, and weren't planning on covering them in tar and feathers, they relaxed. We had coffee. And apple pie. It was almost as good as my mom's." Chloe's stomach clenched. Coffee. No. Better not if she wanted to sleep tonight.

"When we explained why we'd come, they were more than happy to let us take Amy to Metropolis. Poor Mister Potter, and Nelly more than anyone else," Clark went on, "was feeling horrible about those other kids getting sick."

"Huh? How'd they know? That isn't public knowledge."

"No, but Dr Potter knew. He also knew about Amy's blocking power, right?"

Chloe's sympathy for the Potters quickly dwindled. "Does he know that one of those children died today?" she said sharply.

Again there was a couple of seconds' silence. "One of them died? One of those kids that Amy blocked?" He was whispering, probably to not alert Amy.

"Yeah. A little girl. I don't know who."

"No, I don't think they know that yet. Damn."

"Yeah."

"Hang on, I think there's a cow on the road."

Chloe blinked. She listened to the sound of the car braking, a door opening, and then, very faintly, a protesting moo. _Riiiight_. It took another minute, and then a small girl giggled and chattered excitably.

Clark picked up the phone again. "Ok, I put it back."

"That was SO surreal. I mean…we're talking about a man being responsible for the death of a small girl and you start helping COWS?"

"Cows deserve help too, when they've lost their way," Clark said, Zen to the tips of his toes. "So do the Potters. Especially Mark Potter and his daughter. If there's anyone to blame for this whole dreadfully executed plan it's the doctor, not them." Clark's black-and-white view of the world never ceased to amaze Chloe. "So how do we get Amy back into the hospital without putting them at risk?"

Chloe pondered. "Would Amy keep her mouth shut about the Potters when someone questioned her?"

"I think so. She's smart enough."

"You could bring her in?"

"No."

Again, Chloe blinked. "Excuse me?"

"I don't want to be associated with this as well. People _will_ start asking questions if I'm supposed to be in Smallville and suddenly turn up with a supposedly abducted Cradle Cancer child claiming she just showed up on the doorstep."

Chloe wished she could call him selfish but in fact he did have a point.

"And neither can Lana for the same reasons," Clark continued. "But I don't want to drop her in front of LuthorCare either. Who knows who'll pick her up and what kind of questions will be asked. She's still a child; when someone puts pressure on her she'll crack like a nut. No, what we need," he pondered, "is someone from the inside, who can take her in and smooth things out; reinstall her with a minimum of commotion."

Chloe smiled. This was her chance to bring the ultimate sacrifice—known only to herself, unfortunately, but still. "Valerie Decan," she said. "Fear no more, dear friend. I've got it all figured out. Let me call Lex; I'll ring you back later, ok?"

Lex was overjoyed she called. He was also overjoyed to know that Amy was back and in good shape. Chloe's request for Valerie Decan's phone number surprised him, but he said he would be happy to give it to her…if he'd known it by heart.

For some reason, Chloe was very happy he didn't. He did know the number of LuthorCare's info desk, though, and provided her with the number, saying they'd put her through if she asked for Miss Decan. She was bound to be there. Lex agreed with the plan of action Chloe had designed, though he balked at letting Dr. Potter go free.

"The less publicity around Amy, the better," he said. "But we can't just let Potter get away with this. If he knew that those kids Amy blocked were falling sick, and now even died, in one case, not returning Amy is tantamount to manslaughter. I don't care about his intentions, he betrayed his own Hippocratic oath, he endangered my kids, and he must pay for Tina's death. Nooo…I'll make sure to have a word with our good Dr. Potter," he drawled ominously. "And think of a fitting punishment."

"Putting him in jail isn't going to help the dead girl, or her parents," Chloe said, playing the devil's advocate.

"It wouldn't cure my pneumonia if I chopped off Martin Edge's hand with a blunt axe either," Lex returned. "It would give me a profound sense of justice well served, though. But this isn't a case for the MetPolice. All their interference will achieve is a lot of damaged careers and bad publicity—and I'm not only referring to LC. I'll think of something. It must be…" And then his line disconnected, at 9.49 PM, and Chloe imagined she could hear a shriek of rage echo through the streets of Metropolis all the way from the hospital down to her own little flat.

It was late, very late, when Lex's subconscious dragged itself out of a fever dream at the sound of voices speaking in the hallway. His wounds ached and his chest felt as if it was filled with hot grit; it was hours since he had his last pills. Confused, he blinked at the clock hanging above the door; it read 2.45.

Outside his room, the voices were still arguing. One of the voices was feminine. Lex cleared his throat.

"If you're not letting this person in because I'm asleep, you may just as well let her enter," he croaked. All natural command had been coughed out of his voice, he registered sadly. Nevertheless his door opened to a crack. One of his security guards peeked in.

"Mister Luthor. Are you awake?"

"No," Lex said icily, "I always talk in my sleep. Who is it? Miss Sullivan?"

"No, sir. It's Miss Decan. And she has a…a child with her."

_Amy._ Lex made a few brave but rather vain attempts to sit up, and finally decided to receive the both of them lying down. "Let them in. And turn on the light, will you?"

Light flooded the room, causing Lex to squeeze his eyes shut with a muffled exclamation of pain. Valerie stepped into sight, gently pulling a small, cone-shaped figure after her. It could be Amy. It could also be a hobbit. The figure was wrapped in a thick coat, a hat and at least four shawls, and was wearing a plastic mask that covered her mouth and nose. Lex assumed it was Amy, though. He nodded his head in greeting, still squinting against the light.

"Good evening, Valerie. Or maybe I should say good morning."

"Good morning." Valerie looked about as done in as Lex was feeling after more than four hours without morphine. The stark light cast unflattering shadows under her eyes, her hair hung limp and bedraggled from a sagging pony tail, and there was a smudge of mascara in the corner of her right eye. But the smile she gave him was wide and triumphant. She pushed the child in front of her, closer towards Lex's bed, though making sure not to lose contact with her shoulders. "You remember Lex, Amy?"

The cone nodded.

"Hello, Amy," Lex whispered. "Are you ok?"

"Yeah," Amy replied, almost inaudible behind her mask. Now she was closer he could see those remarkable eyes; the only part of her face that was uncovered. "I…I'm sorry you're not."

"Not your fault," Lex said magnanimously, because he could be magnanimous now she was standing right there in front of him. But Amy shook her head. Those marvelous eyes filled with tears.

"If I hadn't blocked you…and Tina…and Emmy, Michael…"

"Emmy and Michael are already doing much better, sweetie," Valerie said, squeezing the girl's shoulder. "Whatever you did, no one blames you for anything. Now, please go and undo what you've done to Lex and we can get you back to bed, huh?

'I really shouldn't have brought her this night, after all she's been through this evening," she added to Lex, while Amy began to pull off her mittens. "But I wasn't sure I'd be able to smuggle her outside after tonight." Her mouth broadened. "This would have been a lot more dramatic if you were actually at death's door, instead of merely a bit down in the dumps."

Lex snorted, fought down a coughing spasm. "I must say I'm quite happy about the lack of drama," he said. "Besides, I've already been knocking on heaven's door once this week, and I'm not exactly eager to repeat the experience."

He stiffened as Amy's small hands took hold of his own hand, picking it up as if it were a small wounded animal. Her power swept through him like a full body blush, and once again he had the strange impression she was made of glass, or paper, or something else so fragile and breakable she was about to shatter into a million pieces. Then it faded, and he felt much like he had before. Still hot. Still _hurt_.

"This is it?" he asked doubtfully. "You've done it?"

The girl nodded.

"It'll take a few hours before you'll notice the difference," Valerie said, rubbing Amy's arm as the child leaned against her. "It was the same with the others."

"Emmy?"

"Back on the original treatment. Her blood's much better already. I'll tell you tomorrow—I'll call you. For now," she repressed a yawn, and immediately Amy's plastic mask misted over when the girl yawned hugely, "I need to get this courageous girl back to bed, and get some rest myself. It's bound to become a madhouse again, tomorrow. We've managed to keep both the press and the police out of it for the time being, but tomorrow…" She grimaced, and yawned again.

Lex smiled. "You certainly look like you could use some sleep." He held out his hand to Amy. For a few seconds, she blinked at it, then shook herself awake and took it. "Thank you for dropping by. When I'm able to walk again I'll come by and chat with you guys for a while, ok?"

She smiled behind her mask. "Ok!"

Valerie leaned over her head and kissed Lex—again on the nose. She really must be serious about those grassy planes. "Good night, Lex."

"Good morning," Lex said.

They left. The light went out. Lex stared at the dark ceiling, waiting for the moment he'd feel different. He lasted for about two minutes before dozing off.

When he woke up again, the hospital was silent and dark, and outside it was snowing. Something was tickling his face. Automatically, he reached up with his left hand to brush it away, and a cascade of short hairs fell down his cheek.

Ah.

He stroked across his forehead, then up, all the way to the back of his head. Beneath a thin layer of loose hairs he was completely, thankfully, utterly bald. And underneath that smooth skin, his brain was humming like a racing car, ready to go from zero to 150 within one second.

The first thing he thought was _Oh thank you God, Allah, Buddha, Odin, Osiris, and anyone else in whatever Pantheon I might have forgotten, thank you._

The second thing was _This itches._

And the third was _How absolutely disgusting. I need to get out of this bed._

He was already sitting up when it occurred to him that he COULD sit up. Oh, it still hurt, but not enough to paralyze him, and the befuddlement of fever, that weird feeling of unreality was just…gone. He brushed more hair from his shoulders; he was completely covered in it, and so was his bed. So was his trendy gay-friendly bare-backed hospital gown. Every single newly-grown hair had dropped down from its follicle and left him deliciously bare…if highly uncomfortable. For one second he considered calling for help, but he really didn't want anyone else here. Not now. They'd tell him to stay in bed, and he wanted out—he NEEDED out, if only to see if he could.

He began by pulling out his IV and peered at the small wound it left behind. It stopped bleeding within a few seconds, even if it didn't heal right up.

_Good enough. My immune system has more complex projects to finish._

With his left hand he managed to undo the cord at the back of his neck that kept the gown from sliding off completely, then fiddled clumsily with the strap that kept his right arm fixed in place. He got it untied and pulled his arm away from his body so he could wriggle out of his gown…and had to bite his tongue to keep from screaming out loud.

_Holy fuck…oh fuck, that hurts!_ He clasped his arm back against his chest, panting for air, and his lungs seized up and god, why had he wanted to move again?

But this time the coughing only jarred his shoulder. His throat seemed to be back to normal, and while his lungs spasmed and squished, that horrible, rending pain was gone. Not yet those cobwebs that weren't cobwebs. He knew how to get rid of those, though. It was revolting, but he guessed it just had to be done and better now than later.

Lex clenched his jaws together. Slowly, carefully, he turned and let his legs drop over the edge of the bed. So far, so good. He hugged his right arm closer to his body, used the left to steady himself and slid out of bed.

And stood.

It hurt, and it hurt a lot, but he didn't fall over or sag through his knees; after three days of bed rest, the floor felt strange beneath his bare feet, but he stood. The gown, no longer held up by the fastening in his neck nor by the arm strap, began to slide from his shoulders. As he very, very gently eased it down his right arm, it dropped to the floor, leaving him standing stark naked but for the bandages in front of his bed. A beam of light fell through a crack in the curtains and painted a thin stripe of white over his side, shining off of him as if his flesh were marble.

Lex took a tottering step towards the basin in the corner. It took him a while, and when he reached it he almost fell against it, sweat rolling down his back and dripping from his nose. He rested his forehead against the coldness of the mirror above the basin, leaned his hip against the sink, his hand against the wall. His breath came in gasps and moans, and that triggered the coughing fit he really hadn't wanted to initiate.

Once it had started, though, there was little he could do to stop it—and that, since he'd walked all the way here so he could start it, would be pretty useless anyway—so he went with it, just making sure he had the wall at his left shoulder to support him and cupping his right elbow with his left hand to keep it steady. At first, nothing happened; he just choked, and his chest hurt a little. Then his lungs started to expel the slime that had gathered inside of them, and he spat out a mouthful of gunk (thankfully colorless in the dim light) into the sink.

Three more minutes of hacking brought up more slime and then finally everything seemed to be settled. The spasm eased. Lex wiped his mouth. His throat felt raw all over again, but breathing had once more become a thoughtless process instead of a painful struggle, and he was very, very happy about that, even though the mass in the sink made him feel nauseous.

_This must be the most repulsive thing I have ever done, _he thought, turning on the tap and watching the globs of slime manfully resist the flow of water. He turned the faucet to make it stream faster. _Including dissecting that decomposing rodent to see if it had truly eaten my mother's ring._ He'd always been a sucker for body fluids. Well, some body fluids.

When all the phlegm had disappeared down the drain, he leaned his other hip against the basin and splashed water over his face, drank some to soothe his aching throat, washed away the sweat and the hairs and the tears that were still stuck to his face. He was simply too weak to clean up the rest of his body, but he made do with what he could, removing as many of the hairs as he could reach in an exhausted half-slump against the sink.

By the time he was more or less finished, all he wanted to do was curl up right where he was standing, but old Luthor pride reared his head and firmly told him that Luthors did not curl up under sinks wearing nothing but their hairless skin, and so he turned to face his bed. And remembered the fine nest of shedding he'd created. There was no way he was going to lie on those blankets.

Nor was he particularly eager to face Nurse Number One wearing even less than he had before, but he was equally loath to wrap himself up in that hair-infested grown again.

_Soooo…clothes. And blankets. I'm so tired. Is this going to stay this way? Wait. Mary had some clothes brought. Where did they put them? If it isn't within two steps reach I'm going to be the first Luthor found sleeping naked on the floor of this hospital. No. Closet._

He shambled over to the closet and almost fell inside with relief when he found one of his shirts lying at the height of his waist. It had two buttons done up to keep it in shape; it took him overly long but in the end he got them undone, slowly and painfully maneuvered his right arm into it and pulled it on the rest of the way. There were boxer briefs too. He did not attempt to pull them on where he was standing but held them clenched between his elbow and his chest while he staggered back to the bed.

Only to be confronted with all that HAIR. He could see it even in that one stripe of light, thousands and thousands of tiny bristles gleaming a faint red in the artificial light. Just seeing them made him itch. But his right leg was now shaking so badly he was afraid his knee would give out any moment, and his left…well. Ow. He'd better find a solution within the next ten seconds, because after that he just wouldn't be standing anymore.

Thankfully, the solution lay within arm's reach. There were still two extra blankets folded over the foot of the bed, left there after he'd gradually started to warm up after his near-death experience. He'd been so cold, the first two days he'd been awake. So bloody cold…

With one working but increasingly painful arm, Lex pulled up the blanket he'd been lying under, covering up most of the hairy sheet, then shook out one of the folded blankets on top of it.

Instant remade bed. By now he was reeling with agony and weakness; when he began to fall he desperately hoped he would actually hit the bed and not the ground or a side table.

He hit the bed. And the one good thing about being this exhausted was that he only had a few seconds to scream silently into the pillow when his wounds set up a collective howling before he lost consciousness.

He didn't even have time to call himself an idiot for straining himself like that.

Lex registered another person in his room before actually waking up. His mind automatically supplied him with the information his body required to either kick-start into wakefulness or to remain off-line; _This is the hospital. It's a nurse. You're safe, you don't_

_need to open your eyes. _And, immediately after that: _if you do decide to wake up… it'll hurt. So really, don't bother.__  
_  
Only when he heard a sharp inhalation of breath, a patter of rubber-soled feet and two fingers jabbed into his neck he opened his eyes.

"Mister Luthor!" Diana the dimpled nurse's eyes were wide with horror. "Are you alright? What happened to you? Who did this to you? How could they...?"

Ah, yes. He probably looked like he'd been attacked by an insane barber.

"I am fine," he said, sitting up, and fuck it was good to be able to move again, and to be instantly awake instead of needing to wait two agonizing seconds before his bloody brain had booted up. "Never better."

Well, that wasn't entirely true, but he was doing much, much better. Although he still had his boxers tucked securely between his arm and his body, and was mooning the poor nurse because he had only drawn a tip of the blanket over his bare bottom. He primly pulled it up to his waist. The pain in his lungs had disappeared, the fever was gone, his legs hurt but not so badly that he wanted to beg for pain killers—which surprised him, after last night's little exploit. His shoulder, well, that was still another thing, but his left arm only twinged a little and even supported his weight as he pushed himself up straight.

His chin briefly brushed his chest as he struggled to sit up. No stubble, that was wonderful too. He blinked up beatifically at the sweet fat nurse, who clucked over him as if he were her freshly laid egg—an association that actually wasn't all that far off. He more or less ignored what she was saying exactly, instead reveling in the smooth, flawless working of his mind. It was as if a veil had been taken away, or a layer of dust and cobwebs—just like in his lungs, leaving him clean and fast, accurate as a Swiss Stop watch. He observed the poor, plain mortal fussing over him with love and pity. 

So, he lost his hair. Big deal. He hadn't missed it before anyway. The only thing he'd been missing had been restored to him, and that was perfection.

With perfection came the realization of certain flaws. He was starving. He wanted his pills. He was sweaty. There were hundreds of tiny hairs stuck to his body and he wanted them gone.

"I'm fine," he repeated for the nurse's sake, took the pills she had clenched, forgotten, in their small plastic retainer and swallowed them. "and I'm really hungry. I'd absolutely love one of those muffins. And," he said, slowly and painfully sliding off the bed onto his feet, "I'd like to take a shower. Do you have any of those plastic wraps so I can keep my bandages dry?"

"Mister Luthor! You're not supposed to get up yet!"

He gave her his most winning smile—which was rather harder than he'd thought since it still hurt like hell to stand. But he could, and therefore he would. "I'm out of bed, am I not? It would take more trouble to get into it than go to the bathroom. Besides, the bed's covered in hair. I'm afraid I shed, during the night." He grinned brightly. The nurse dimpled, if a little hesitantly. Lex wished she'd get the hell out of his way before he fell flat on his face.

"You really shouldn't..." she began, saw the twitch of pain and annoyance turn his grin into a grimace and decided to put his fate into the hands of a higher power. "I'll go and fetch the doctor."

"You do that," Lex said, and sank down again when she had gone. Ok, this might not be such a good idea as he thought it had been. Those pills were a hell of a lot more effective if he remained perfectly still. But damn it, he was sick and tired of being an invalid and pain had never stopped him before, so he was going to have his shower if it killed him.

Dr. Scanlan breezed into the room while Lex was gathering enough courage to get up again, took one look at his gleaming pate and said, "Ah."

"Yes." said Lex.

"The little girl?" So he had been aware of Lex's late night visit. He probably even approved it. For the umpteenth time, Lex was very glad he'd selected Scanlan to be his personal doctor.

"Yes."

"Would you mind if I took some blood to examine?"

"By all means." He rubbed his jaw, relishing the total absence of bristles, razor burns and tiny blemishes that ordinary human skin apparently collected. Victoria Hardwick would have been overjoyed; he was completely debauched again.

Scanlan ran out of the room, returning only a moment later with a needle. Lex was thoroughly tired of needles, but he let this one last drawing happen with perfect docility. It was the last appointment with a needle he was planning in a very long time.

"So you how do you feel?" Scanlan asked as he ticked the bubbles of oxygen out of the blood.

"Good. Hungry. Grimy. I'm in need of a shower."

The doctor frowned. "You really shouldn't strain yourself yet. Even if you are healing a lot more quickly, you're by no means cured yet."

Lex observed him from behind lowered eyelids. The doctor sighed. "I'll get you a few plastic wraps."

"Thank you," Lex said pleasantly. Half an hour later he was back in his freshly made bed, too tired to keep his eyes open and in a significant amount of pain, but clean, warm, and very satisfied with himself. He became even more content when he got more Tylenol, even when Scanlan told him that it would replace his good old morphine.

Morphine was heavenly, but if having it substituted by Tylenol meant that he could go home faster, he would gladly give it up. Then, his overtaxed super-healing body decided that it should protect itself against its self-destructive owner and knocked out his brain.

Lex spent the rest of the morning, and a large part of the afternoon in a near coma, one hand curled against his smooth jaw, with a small, grateful smile on his face.

Chloe called later that afternoon to tell him that she wouldn't be able to make it anywhere near visiting hours because Perry, curse his evil black heart, had sent her to interview some political hotshot in Lawrence and she wouldn't be back until late that evening. She asked Lex how he was doing.

He told her he was doing great.

She asked him if he was still a redhead.

He told her no.

She asked whether it was advisable to try and visit him at the hospital tomorrow.

He told her that if she came to the hospital she wouldn't find him there, and that he'd enjoy it if she came by his penthouse the following evening.

She informed him that she would be delighted to observe him in his natural habitat.

He wondered if she had any requests in connection with food.

She replied that spaghetti would do fine.

He told her that she was a creature of habit and that she should have a varied diet.

At this moment she gave an exclamation of distress and said that she wasn't ever going to make it to dinner because she had to be in Lenexa that day.

"That's ok," said Lex. "That saves me the difficulty of coming up with something balanced and healthy. You can stay over, if you like. I can always feed you breakfast."

"Deal," said Chloe, and then she hung up because she was getting herself killed phoning without a handless set on the road.

Humming, Lex lay back, and it did not once enter his mind to think about the fact that this was the third time he'd broken rule number 3 with Chloe. Maybe that was because he could not think of a single reason why he would ever want to kick her out.

On Pain (which he was considering to rename December) 29 morning, Lex told Scanlan that he would leave that same afternoon. He had already ordered Charlie Falls to pick him up at two.

"I'd prefer to keep you here for a few more days," the doctor said. "For observation."

"This morning you observed that I was doing exceptionally well," Lex argued.

"I observed that you were doing exceptionally well for someone who had been shot five times only four days ago," Scanlan amended. "You still have a dime-sized hole in your shoulder," (Lex's lip curled; he'd watched when the doctor had changed his bandages, and he was somewhat appalled to see just that, a hole, in the slight indent between the swell of his shoulder and his chest) "A no more than half-healed wound in one leg—which you keep reopening because you insist on overexert yourself!, a hair fracture in the thigh bone of the other, twenty stitches in your head, and a slight case of anemia."

Lex radiated Lionel for a moment, saying nothing.

In the end, Scanlan sighed. "But I guess you'd recover more quickly in more familiar surroundings." Lex smiled. "As long as you don't walk too much." His face turned very serious. "I mean it, Lex. You shouldn't walk yet. Not even at the speed you're healing."

"I have an apartment," Lex said dryly. "I wouldn't be able to walk more than a few feet at a time if I wanted to." He did not mention that his apartment was likely about as big as this whole hospital floor. He wasn't planning on walking much, anyway. But talking about going home…even if it was his too large, too sterile penthouse made him severely homesick.

"You'll need help," Scanlan said. "Someone has to come by and dress your wounds. Help you wash…"

"I can do that just fine," Lex interrupted him curtly.

"Your prescriptions…"

"I'll have them picked up for me."

"If you were to fall…"

"I won't. Look," he said as the doctor opened his mouth to issue forth more objections, "I'll manage. If I can't, I have staff who can manage for me. What I really want, and need, is to go home and forget about this nightmare. Unless you have any other objections I'm going home this afternoon."

Scanlan attempted to speak a few times, finally gave up and nodded. "I'll sign the necessary papers."

"Thank you."

"I'll have a wheelchair pick you up at two."

Lex's eyebrows danced on his endless forehead. "Wheelchair?"

The doctor's thin lips spread in a vindictive smile. Lex, realizing beggars can't be choosers, gave a single, sharp nod, admitting defeat. The hallway to the elevator was pretty long, anyway. And he could always get out of it later, or so he thought.

He was sitting on his bed, fully dressed, biting through the pain as if it was a particularly hard apple when soft footsteps outside his door made him look up. Primary colors appeared in the doorway: blue jeans, red jacket, red sneakers; in his spare time Clark still dressed like he had when he was in high school. As always when he saw him, Lex felt something clench in his stomach; happiness to see his one-time friend instantly turned to wariness, disappointment tempered by regret and the realization that he was looking at something unique, and that this being should be protected and nurtured, even as the need to FIND OUT, study and dissect made his fingers twitch and a sense of betrayal caused sarcasm to rise in his throat.

"Clark," he said, and forced his mouth to close after that one comment. He'd just been saved by this boy, after all. Again.

Clark inclined his head. "Lex." He pushed his hands in his pockets. The corners of his mouth quirked up. "I see Amy's done her magic trick again. Pity."

"Thank you," Lex said dryly, and Clark hastily added, "I mean...your hair. Not that you're up and about again. That's good."

"I can't say I'll miss the hair," Lex replied. "But I must say I'm rather grateful I'm 'up and about' again, as well. It seems I must thank you again for saving my life. It's becoming quite a drag."

"It was Chloe who saved you with her phone, not me," Clark shot back. Lex laughed. "What?"

"Oh, nothing. It's just that no one seems to want to take credit for rescuing me. When I thanked Chloe she insisted it was you who'd saved me. You claim it was her. I wasn't talking about the forest anymore. I know who saved me, and how," he gave Clark one of his most provoking smirks, and enjoyed seeing him squirm. "It's bringing back Amy I'm referring to. In the first place for the poor girl herself, but yes, in the second place for me, too. Thank you, Clark, for bringing her back."

Clark looked up, met his eyes straight on. "I didn't do it for you." And suddenly a game came into existence, and they were both playing it even though, Lex dared to believe, Clark didn't even know he'd just agreed to play it.

"I know," Lex said calmly. "We're past the stage where you'd do anything for me. I'm sure you saved me only to please Chloe. Still, I'm rather fond of my life and so I'm going to be grateful to you for saving it, whether you want it or not."

Clark's eyes shifted, looked away.

Lex fifteen, Clark love.

Lex pushed himself to his feet, wincing just enough to feel those eyes come back to rest on him. It did hurt, but he was very good at hiding pain. A soupcon of well-but-not-completely-hidden suffering had never harmed a cause yet—when it came to people other than his father, of course.

"Should you stand up?" Clark asked, as Lex had hoped and expected he would. Clark didn't rush towards him in order to catch him should he lose his balance, but he did ask.

Lex graced him with his old, flippant smile. "Why, Clark, I'd almost think you cared. Didn't you just tell me you only saved me for Chloe?"

"No," Clark said sharply, "That's what _you_ said."

Lex fifteen, Clark fifteen. Fifteen all.

"But you agreed. Didn't you?"

"I don't want her to get hurt," Clark spat. "And for some reason she's taken the very place I used to have, before I finally saw who and what you really are."

"I didn't know we were lovers," Lex drawled. "You and I." And Clark flushed, darkly, angrily. A flutter of excitement started in Lex's stomach, made his blood throb in his wounds.

Lex thirty, Clark fifteen.

"I swear to you, Lex, if you hurt her…"

"Don't be an idiot," Lex said mildly. "I'd never hurt her. Besides, what do you care? You had her. You could have had her. I even presented her to you. Hell, I made you an offer of all the women you ever wanted, and all you did was turn them down."

"This isn't about me!" Clark snarled. He took one step back and slammed the door closed behind him.

_Gotcha_.

"Isn't it?" Lex asked.

"No! This is about Chloe, and about how I don't want her to end up like me. Shut up! You know exactly what I mean! I don't know how you did it," he hissed, taking another step forward and towering over Lex, who kept standing the way he was, merely tilting up his face a little. "Making her forget what she'd seen, making her change her mind about you. She used to be the one to tell me you were trouble."

Lex raised one eyebrow. "Maybe I'm a really good fuck? That tends to change women's minds. Haven't you tried that out on Lana? Or are you still afraid to crush her when you hold her? Or shoot your semen straight through the back of her head when she gives you a blowjob? It's a good thing she doesn't seem to care much about sex, isn't it? Or is she just frigid? With all the boyfriends she's had, you'd think she was rather experienced but she just strung them along…First Adam, then Jason…Who knows, she might be grateful you're too frightened to…"

"Shut up! Shut up you BASTARD!" Clark's hands shot out, grabbed hold of his collar and _lifted_. Lex couldn't quite keep back a grunt of pain as his feet left the ground and he found himself once more face to face with Clark, but exhilaration dulled most of the pain.

Forty to Lex, fifteen to Clark.

"Temper, temper, Clark," he rasped, clawing, despite himself, at the fingers twisted in his shirt, without causing even a scratch. "You might show…how strong you…actually are." The fingers unclenched; he fell back down so hard he thought he might pass out for a second. He clasped his shoulder, blinked hard at the black spots in his vision.

"I don't know what you mean," Clark said, taking a few steps back towards the door. If he went out now, Lex would have lost this game, and he didn't want to lose. There was too much at stake. Lex abused his poor tongue again, inwardly promising it better treatment in the future. At least he didn't draw blood anymore.

"Oh come on, Clark," he exclaimed, the hoarseness in his voice—agony, and none of it acted—drawing Clark back to him. Displays of power antagonized him, weakness drew him closer, not to see his opportunity and strike, but to help. Clark Kent, the ultimate life guard. "How blind do you think I am? I've _studied_ you! I devoted five years of my _life_ to you and your secrets!" For some reason, the s in secrets came out in a lisp.

"And you found nothing!" Clark shot back.

Lex rubbed his throat. God it was good to have his old body back. One moment there was a rope burn (shirt burn, actually), then it faded and was gone. He'd really appreciate it if his body caught up on the wounds in his legs and shoulder, and patched them up too. He wasn't sure how long he could keep standing like this. _You'll just have to make do with what you've got._

"I found plenty," he said, softly, channeling his inner evil Lionel with all the expertise he had.

It was like drawing flies with poisonous honey; mesmerize them despite their aversion, charm them like a snake. It was known that Clark couldn't withstand rabid dogs, feeling obligated to check whether they weren't just wild and tame them, or to put them out of their misery. He didn't stand a chance against Lex.

"I found out so much about you I could write a book about it. I mean, do you really think I didn't notice you cringe whenever we came even close to our beloved Smallville Rock? Or how explosions no one could possibly survive did nothing but ruin your clothes? More than that…" His lip curled at the memory, "did you think that I'd ignore the fact that you jumped in front of a car that was going forty miles an hour…and wrecked the fucking _car_?" Red lightning flashed through his head, brought on by memories of gun barrels spitting bullets, drug-induced dreams of dead men behind the wheel, and the very real and present pain of shot wounds that simply hadn't been given a chance to heal yet. His carefully constructed mask cracked. The lightning struck one of his mental walls, split some sort of dam he didn't even know he had, and before he knew it a torrent of bitter resentment came roaring out. "HOW FUCKING BLIND DO YOU THINK I AM, CLARK?"

Clark took another step back, his eyes wide. "You…you remember that?"

Lex advanced upon him, both the game and all pain forgotten. "Yes," he snarled, "I remember. I remember everything. I remember shooting Edge, and you crawling through those Kryptonite beads as if they were sucking the very life out of you. I remember you bleeding. And I remember Edge driving his car at me, and the car coming at me even though I shot him. I shot him five fucking times and he just kept driving at me. And then…like magic! You pushing me out of the way, and that car's front just _wrapping around you_, as if it were tin foil! It crashed ON YOU! And you LEFT me! You left me to a bunch of psychotic lunatics who kept me locked up in a freaking MADHOUSE! Who fried my fucking BRAIN to make me forget who and what I was, and you LEFT me there!"

Now it was his turn to grab the other man by his shirt, and Clark was either too shocked to fight him, or did not want to hit the poor cripple. Either way, Lex didn't care. "You save everyone!" he snarled. "You go out of your way to rescue the weak, the ignorant, even poor, deceived criminals! But you LEFT me there because I saw what you were. You'd rather let my father torture me than admit that I was right about you, than trust me! Hell yes I remember you betraying me like that!"

"You were…" Clark protested faintly, but Lex talked over him.

"I was what? I was your FRIEND at that time!"

"I tried to get you out!" Clark said, putting his hands over Lex's and gently, carefully prying them off. "I did!"

"I can't remember _that_!" Lex spat.

"I _did_," he maintained, his expression almost painfully earnest. "You've got to believe me, Lex. When I found out about Lionel's plans to use shock therapy on you, I tried to get you out."

"And you failed. How convenient. I'm sure you didn't mourn the fact that I also lost all my memories of you and your little metal bending skills. After three whole months to prepare you prison break, you still failed. You must have been heart-broken."

"I was." Clark finally noticed he was still holding Lex's hands like a pair of possibly mean parakeets and released them, crossed his own arms over his chest in defense. "I felt horrible about leaving you there—I did, Lex! But what could I have done about it?"

"You could have broken me out!" Lex cried. "You could have trusted me! You could have at least eased my own mind about the fact that I wasn't losing it, as everyone was trying to convince me!" He fell back against the edge of the small washing basin, leaned against it, his legs quivering. When he spoke again, his voice was so filled with hate he didn't even recognize it as his own. "Desiree betrayed me because she wanted power," he grated out. "Helen betrayed me because she wanted money. But you betrayed me because you put your secret over your friend's life. You call me despicable, Clark? A traitor? At least I can claim I never was a coward, and that I always, always stood up for my friends."

Clark opened his mouth, then closed it, opened it again and closed it once more. "Ok," he finally said. "You are right. That was wrong. Abandoning you to save my own skin was wrong, and I'm sorry about it. I thought you didn't remember any of that, though. I didn't not tell you about it because I was being a coward, but because I didn't think you'd WANT to remember all that."

"Clark," Lex hissed. "I willingly had one of the most vile and untrustworthy quacks in the world expose my mind to experimental treatment to get my memory back—or are you having some memory problems yourself? You almost died in that tank yourself, or did you forget about that? Of course I'd want to remember! And I did! Not at once; it took some time before I remembered you stopping Edge's car, but it came back to me, along with my memories of my father blowing up his parents for insurance money and my mother smothering…" He trailed off, pushed his fist against his mouth.

_Jesus Christ, how did I let this get out of hand like this? __Focus, man, focus!_

He shouldn't have been afraid. His lack of control only served to anchor Clark more firmly into this room. Time to lead the conversation back into the direction he'd planned it to go. He drew in a steadying breath, pressed his lips together as his shoulder whined in protest, and prepared another service.

"I have known," he said softly, "that you were different from the day you fished me out of that river. You once called my interest in you an obsession; I call it a healthy interest in the unexplainable. And every single thing you did, every time you moved too fast and came up with the same lousy excuses, told me more about who you were, and how special you were."

"Because you pried into my life!" Clark shot back hotly. "You spied on me, you even set me up to see how I…"

"Because you wouldn't _tell_ me!" Lex cried out, and composure hid in the corner. "God damn it, do you think I'm _stupid_? I've given you the opportunity to come clean with me so many times, but you twisted around it, lied, evaded—everything but trust me!"

"And look at how right my father was telling me not to!" Clark yelled back.

"Your father!" Lex's lip curled into an ugly sneer. "Nothing but good about the dead, but your father was a sanctimonious bastard! Talk about prejudice! I could have protected you and your family, Clark."

"From what? Yourself?"

"No, from my father!"

"These days it's very hard to see the difference!"

Lex reeled back as if Clark had hit him. "I am not like my father!" he snarled. "I am NOTHING like my father!"

"No?" Clark asked scornfully. "To me, you're so similar I have to look twice to make the distinction. Hell, you're the same even up to the point that people go out of their way to execute you!" The moment those words were out he blanched, tried to take them back. Lex didn't let him.

"I asked you to help me," he rasped. "I know who I am, and I know where I come from. I asked you to help me to become more than my upbringing, keep the darkness contained, to distance myself from the man I was becoming. And what did you do?"

"Lex…"

"You _left_. _Again_. You turned your back on me as a hopeless case and dropped me. God, I never knew how far I lowered my guard around you before you put your knife into my gut and twisted it around and left me to bleed to death. I literally begged you to stop me becoming like my father, because I knew you were the only one who could. And you _gave up_ on me!"

"I did NOT give up on you. But you…"

"Clark, the only times I saw you after that splicing incident was when you burst into my house to either insult me, accuse me, assault me, or demand my help. In the name of friendship. Ha!" He wiped his mouth, his fist shaking with anger. His whole fucking body was shaking; it was all he could do to keep his voice down and not just scream with fury. "And I never let you down, did I, Clark? If you needed help, I'd give it to you. I still would. Because you know, I still owe you. You probably don't know it, but you've saved my life more often than you'd care to think."

Clark said nothing, waiting for him to go on. For the first time since he'd closed the door, he seemed to be aware that something was going on, that there was a game between the two of them. The red gleam of rage had left his eyes, his face was unreadable.

Lex continued, a little more calmly, though he was still shaking on his feet. "Do you remember that time when that fear gas escaped?"

"Yes. I do."

"Almost everyone was affected. Chloe. Lana. You. Your parents. Me. You were the only one to fall into a coma and come out of it alive. When we, my scientists and I, were waiting for the antidote to reach the required temperature, you conveniently 'came by', and lo and behold, the chemicals heated up to 100—did you really think you were inconspicuous?" he shook his head. "We had hours to go and you saunter in and bam! Done! What power is that, then? Microwave eyes?" Again he shook his head, this time to shake away the irrepressible urge to start interrogating Clark and never stop doing it.

"You were the only one to come out of it, and so we used your blood for the antidote," he continued, tonelessly. "I tried it out first. And you know, Clark, I was sick at the time. Poisoned. My father poisoned me."

"_What_?"

"Oh yes, he did." Lex took an evil pleasure in the horror in Clark's innocent face. "I almost died. You wouldn't know, of course. You left town. Or earth. Hell if I know where you went. It isn't important. What is, is that after I took that serum, I was cured. Oh, I still needed dialysis every few months, but the original poison was gone. Just…isolated and removed, like a computer virus by a virus scanner. Your blood is truly amazing, Clark. No wonder my father guarded it so jealously. Oh, don't worry," he said, as fear widened Clark's eyes, "it's gone, now. I don't know what happened to it; my father believes I have it, and since I don't, I'm quite sure he doesn't know what happened to it either."

He readjusted his position. The wounds in his legs were sending sparks of agony up his thighs, but it was essential he didn't show weakness now. That could come later. He had to finish this volley.

"You save people," he continued, composed once more. "One, two, sometimes a whole bus-load at the time. You're quite the superhero, perhaps you should get yourself a cape. But has it ever occurred to you that you can save hundreds of people? Millions, even? With nothing but your blood? Your blood heals. It heals everything, anything. You could eliminate aids, hepatitis, leprosy with no more effort than donating ten ounces of blood. Not a single disease would be able to withstand it."

"Not until people like you would take it and manipulate it and use it for biological warfare," said Clark.

The game recommenced, and Clark scored. Thirty all.

"I would never do that."

"No? Wouldn't you? Not even when someone dared you to, to prove that you could?"

"If you would trust your blood to me," Lex said solemnly, "I would only use it for the purpose it was meant for. To heal. Nothing more."

Clark gave him a humorless smile. "Say I believe you. Say you are honorable enough to resist the temptation to create something else out of my blood. Like, for instance, a disease that CAN'T be cured. Or worse, a human that can't be hurt. Someone like me, but not quite like me. Something that incontrovertibly would turn upon its maker. Where'd we be then, huh?"

"We'd be dead," Lex said bluntly. "Like I would be without your blood."

"What," Clark asked, "is this sudden fascination with my blood about?"

Forty for Lex, thirty to Clark.

He pointed outside the window. "See that tower over there? You can just see the top from here."

"LuthorCare," Clark agreed. "What of it?"

"There are 27 kids in that tower, all dying of cancer." He held up his hand to stop Clark from speaking and winced; that arm wasn't doing all that well at the moment. "Yes, you brought Amy back. That means that some of those children are now dying at a slower pace than they were before. It's not good enough, Clark, not for me."

If he didn't sit down he was going to finish this crucial speech lying flat on the ground. He limped back to the bed and dropped down on it, hoping the anew-visibly vein on his uncovered temple wasn't jumping as badly as it felt. Clark's eyes never left his face, wary, watching. _He can probably look right through me._ Now that was a scary thought. If he could, Lex's poker face was not going to hide the fact that his heart was beating so fast he could almost feel it jump out of his ribcage. But Clark's face was not showing anything, so Lex went on with his game.

"Chloe's probably told you by now that the cure we've made is based on the meteor-induced accelerated healing factor in my blood." He smiled, suddenly seeing the humor in the situation. "You can probably appreciate the irony that whatever I do, you can do better."

Clark's jaw dropped, and stayed down, making him look decidedly moronic. "You…" he stammered. "You want me to give you my blood to heal those Cradle Cancer kids?"

Lex wasn't sure whom to appoint the point. Feeling generous, he gave it to Clark, because he was being such a good boy. Deuce.

Before he could speak, Clark threw the ball into the air; his time to serve. And he walloped an ace. "Jesus fucking Christ, Lex, couldn't you just have _asked_?"

Hm. He hadn't really considered that. He had considered stunning Clark with a Kryptonite-tipped tranquilizer and then opening his vein with one of the little razor-sharp Green K knives to take some of his blood if tricking him into giving it wouldn't work…but he hadn't seriously thought about simply asking for it. No, he _had_ considered it and laughingly scratched it as an option. "Does that mean you'll do it?"

Clark wildly shook his head. "You …you insane, side-stepping, lying, cheating… bastard! Good god, I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't just experienced it first hand!" His finger stabbed into Lex's direction. "You've been trying to guilt-trip me! This whole shouting match…you STAGED it!"

"No," Lex said sharply. "This conversation, at least most of it, was not staged at all."

And Clark grinned, not that hard smile that showed no teeth, but his old, wide, Colgate smile. "No," he said, watching Lex with obvious amusement, "I'm sure it wasn't. You were probably going to be all condescending and witty and sarcastic, cocoon me in my own words and have me signing a weekly blood letting contract in my own blood."

_Dad was right; I really need to learn to control my emotions better, _Lex thought irritably. But Clark was still looking at him with a friendlier expression than he had in three years.

"Why didn't you tell me you were ill?" Clark asked, startling him a little with the unexpectedness of the question. "Or that you'd been shot on Christmas, two years ago as well? Chloe told me," he added. "She was upset you hadn't told anyone."

Lex haughtily raised his chin. "You didn't trust me. Why should I have trusted you with my weaknesses?"

Clark shook his head, his smile slipping. "You are so messed up, Lex." He almost sounded sad.

"I could say the same of you," Lex retorted. "But we could sit around all day discussing each other's mental failings. What I'd like to get from you is affirmation that you'll cure my kids with your blood. Because I can't do it, and I don't want them to die."

"People die, sometimes." Clark looked away. "You can't save them all. Words of wisdom," he said, smiling faintly, "from my sanctimonious bastard of a father."

"Not those I have set out to save," Lex said stubbornly. Then he deflated, so tired he would have fallen over if the bed hadn't been propping him up. He didn't have a clue whether they were still playing anymore, or whether anyone had won, and if so, who. "I'm sorry about that. Your father. I shouldn't have said that."

"No," said Clark, "you shouldn't have." He walked over to the bed and sat down next to Lex. "But you are right on one account."

"Oh?"

"My father was wrong when he said you had no honor."

"My life regains meaning."

"Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Become all sarcastic. Showing your true face once in a while doesn't make you weak, Lex."

_Yes,_ Lex thought sourly, _it does._

"I'm sorry for all the pain you've had to go through because I failed you," Clark went on in the same low, warm voice—the voice that worked so well on skittish horses and dumb cows. "Even if I'm not sorry for keeping my secrets to myself. You _are_ obsessed, Lex, obsessive and neurotic, and it's terrifying being on the other end of the microscope. You scare the hell out of me, sometimes."

"But don't you see?" Lex asked. "I would never do that! Why else do you think you're not locked up in a lab somewhere, being tested upon and dissected and analyzed? Because I wouldn't betray you. I'd never hurt you or your family—why is that so hard to believe!?"

"If I weren't…if I didn't use to be your friend, would you have the same reticence?" Clark asked gently.

"Yes," said Lex, but he knew that Clark was right. If Lex hadn't become mesmerized by the miracle boy who saved him, the Christ in the corn field, he'd have had him locked up and tagged like an animal before he'd turned sixteen. Because Lex's obsessions ran that deep, and he'd go that far to satisfy his curiosity.

The epiphany hit him like another lightning strike. The other end of the microscope. God, am I that much of a monster? I am! I would! The blood drained from his face, leaving it numb, cold. Inside of him the writhing darkness swelled to an immense sea, an automatic reaction to drown the horror of seeing himself, realizing who he was. He shivered with cold.

"Uh, hang on Lex," Clark said. "Stop freaking out, will you? Hello, earth to Lex. Lex? Should I get someone?" he put both his hands on Lex's shoulders—warm hands, the man was always so bloody warm.

"No," Lex whispered, and when Clark raised his eyebrows, "I wouldn't. You're right, I wouldn't."

Clark understood. He nodded. "I know," he said. "And that's why we can't be friends. Do you understand? Because I can't wrap my head around that, and I can't change that part of you. It scares me. And I believe it scares you too, but that doesn't stop you. That darkness you want me to protect you from? It's a part of you. Maybe I'm even responsible for drawing it out, I don't know. It might be so. But it was always there, Lex, and it always will be."

He gave Lex a crooked smile. "You're not necessarily a bad guy, you know."

"Spare me the pep-talk," Lex muttered, and Clark snorted.

"I wasn't giving you pep-talk. I was informing you of your options." He sighed, then chuckled and said, "_My_ kids, Lex? You've adopted them, now? And they'd better be saved or you're going to take your putter to their fragile bald skulls?"

"No," said Lex. "to my scientists' skulls." He rubbed his aching shoulder. "I don't think you wholly understand how serious this is."

"Oh, I think I get it," Clark assured him. He heaved a deep, long sigh. "Alright. You can have some. To save your kids, and to save the poor heads of your staff…fine. If you can do it, I can do it better."

"You're doing it? You're donating your blood to LuthorCare?"

"No," Clark corrected him, "I'm giving it to _you_." He grew serious again, more serious than Lex had seen him before, because there was nothing of the boy he used to know in his face. "And I want your word that you'll use every single drop to create the cure for this cancer, and that if there is anything left, be it blood, cells, plasma, DNA, I don't care, anything at all—that you'll destroy that. Because if you don't, Lex, and I find out, I will…I swear I'll…"

"Don't make promises you can't keep," Lex interrupted him. "You aren't the killing type. I give you my word. I swear upon the grave of my mother that I won't use your blood for anything else but the cure for Cradle Cancer." He was tempted to add 'cross my heart', but was afraid Clark would think he was being facetious, while he wasn't. Not at all.

"Ok," said Clark. He hesitated for a few seconds, then held out his hand. "Truce?"

Lex gripped his hand and shook it. "Armistice," he agreed.

"Good. So, shall I go and get the nurse for you now?"

Lex blinked. "Excuse me?"

Clark pointed. "You're bleeding. If you want to leave the hospital I suggest you don't do it with pulled stitches."

Lex looked down. A dark red spot the size of a nickel was slowly gaining breadth on his right thigh. "I'll be damned," he murmured. Well, that at least explained why it hurt so much.

Clark got up, studied him for a while, shook his head. "You know, I think you'd be a much better negotiator if you weren't suicidal."

"I'm not."

"No, I can see that," Clark scoffed. He smiled. "But you know what, Lex, without meaning to sound like a cliché, as long as you're willing to bleed for those kids, so am I."

Game, set, match. When Clark was out of the door, Lex punched the air. And winced.

"Ow."

TBC

I've been wanting to write this part for ages and ages. Like I said before, I didn't watch anything past season 5 ep. 10, so Brainiac only appeared as Spike, and wasn't known as Brainiac at the time, and if I'm correct there's going to be a whole shitload of cloning and vengeance and Lex marrying Lana, etc…Maybe Lex has done something of which Clark accuses him in the series. If so, I'm not aware of it, but then, with Clark being his old nice self again and Lex being just twisted instead of mindlessly evil I guess you can call this blatant AU anyway 


	20. Chapter 20

So, I wasn't going to apologize for late posting

So, I wasn't going to apologize for late posting. So I'm not.

This chapter is something like R again. I was going to go for the real hardcore stuff this time, but again, logic and stupid humor interfered and it became what it is now. Sigh, I'll never be able to write a good bodice ripper.

Anyway, only a few chapters left. As always, tell me what you think, and sorry if there are any stupid spelling or grammar errors in this; I didn't really edit it or something.

**Twenty: In which there is painful sex, bad dreams and general fluff**

Victor from the lobby's security desk had taken Lex's jacket from his chair in the lobby restaurant, put it in a safe and presented it to Lex when Lex limped inside that afternoon.

"Your phone is in the left pocket, sir," Victor said as he handed it over. "It's rung a couple of times."

Lex fished the cell out, pressed the send button. The cell protested that it was as good as empty, but did not blink out before notifying him that he had 27 messages and missed calls. He smirked. "Thank you."

The elevator trip hurt when it went up because it briefly increased his gravity, but Lex hardly noticed it, already focusing on the work ahead of him.

He had to call Tippitt and tell him he was an idiot.

He had to call Wong, and several other people who were involved in his China project.

He had to call his father and ask how LuthorCorp was doing.

He had to check the company's stocks, needed to call David Reese or Valerie. He needed to make an appointment with Clark to drain him of as much blood as he could get out of him. He had to check his emails, and reassure everyone that he was back in the saddle. He had to…

He had to have a drink, first.

Lex unlocked his door, limped inside, made a tottering beeline to his antique liquor cabinet, retrieved the carafe with whiskey and a glass, stumbled to his couch and sank down. Sweat beaded on his nose and formed unseemly patches on his shirt; he hadn't thought pain could be this strenuous.

But he was home, now, and he wasn't planning to budge from his sprawl in the near future, say, before Chloe's small reporter finger pressed the bell. Yes, he should go through his emails—they must have piled up and clogged his inbox—but despite the return of his magnificent healing factor, he was still so tired the mere thought of his bed made his eyelids droop. Ahh, his own bed. Seven foot on both sides instead of the measly three and six he'd had in the hospital. A duvet instead of those annoyingly thin blankets. Pillows that actually supported your head instead of solely taking up space…

_I really shouldn't fall asleep. I really need to make some phone calls. _

_Can't. Cell's empty._

_How terribly unfortunate._

He poured himself a drink, a perfect two-fingers' breadth of golden liquor. Then he laughed at himself and doubled it. Downed it in two gulps, savoring the burn as it went down.

Poured another double and tossed it back as well. It gave him hiccups but he drowned them with another shot. By now it felt as if his entire esophagus was on fire, but that didn't stop him from splashing another inch into his glass and sipping it, slowly this time, until the burning sensation eased and turned into a glowing warmth.

God, he had missed this.

Imbibing liquor was so much better without getting drunk. He held up his left hand (knowing better than to raise his right yet) and watched fingers steady as rock. No shaking, no jittering. Even the bits of skin he'd chewed off out of frustration were healing.

He used his rock-steady hands to pour himself another glass. Could one be an alcoholic without the physical addiction? If he hadn't had perfect healing he was quite sure his liver would be thoroughly pickled; as it was, it was as lily white as a T-totaller's. Or should be, again, soon. Although it probably wasn't a very good idea to drink so much while he was still taking medication.

"Who knows, I might get drunk after all," Lex murmured. The thought amused him to no end—but then he envisioned falling down in front of the toilet and throwing up with two shot legs and a bloody hole in his shoulder, and put down his glass.

He really should get down to business.

Slowly, he pulled himself up and first hunted down the charger for his cell and then his laptop. In his absence, his apartment had been cleaned, and instead of on the coffee table, where he'd left it, his laptop had been moved to the big table on the other side of the room. He hesitated before opening it, wondering if he should test it for fingerprints first, but then shook his head and turned it on. If people had wanted to crack his laptop, they'd had four days to do so, and there wasn't much he'd be able to do about it. Besides, four days still wouldn't be enough to get through all the layers of protection Lex had set up to protect his privacy.

He sighed, loud and with a touch of desperation, when his Outlook opened and just kept adding messages to the Unread list. When it hit thirty and still didn't show any sign of stopping soon he picked up his phone instead and started to listen to his messages.

Taking notes with his right hand was painful, but since none of his special meteor powers had ever deigned to bless him with the truly useful gift of ambidexterity (on the contrary, Lex was extremely right-handed) he jotted down as much as his shoulder would allow, and when he'd played all the messages he was left with two closely written A4s of business plans and subjects people would like to discus with him.

Tippitt had called him no less than five times to tell him he'd finally found the man responsible for Mowett's death, sounding a little more desperate every time. All of those messages were left on Sunday, and Lex smiled grimly when he pressed ReCall.

To his recommendation Tippit picked up after the first beep. "Mister Luthor."

"Hello, Tippit." Then, there was a short silence while Tippitt tried to decipher Lex's mood and Lex refused to give him a hint. Lex smiled cruelly before he broke it. "I'd say you failed to find the man who murdered Mowett. Not before he found me, that is," he drawled.

"Yes, sir." Tippitt's voice was toneless, but not groveling and that was commendable too.

"I assume you DID find Martin Edge, alias Jones, alias Smith, alias…well, you can fill in the entire color spectrum and any one-night-stand-hotel name. Did you?"

"Yes sir," Tippitt said. "I found out where he lived, and definite proof that he was indeed the one who'd infiltrated in Orizon last Sunday. It wasn't him who killed Mowett, though. He only gave the order."

Lex sat up a little straighter, wincing as he thoughtlessly used his leg for support. "Yes?"

"Yes, sir. The man who shot down Mister Mowett was a former Orizon employee. His name is Bernard Simmons."

"Simmons…" Lex mused, recognizing the name but not immediately able to place it.

"He used to work at the New York LuthorCorp IT department," Tippitt supplied. "Until two years ago." And suddenly Lex remembered, the incident if not the face of the man. One of his level 3 incidents, and the reason why he shut down that level in New York. The man's wife had died. While Tippitt related his findings, Lex typed in 'B. Simmons' into the LuthorCorp database, easily side-stepped a few privacy-protecting firewalls, and found the picture of the man who had pushed a gun in Chloe's back, five days ago.

Well, that explained something at least.

"It seems that Rachel Savez found out about him," Tippitt went on. "About Simmons, that is. Edge, who was known as Jones at Orizon, had already left by that time. Simmons disappeared shortly after Mowett's murder, a day or two or so, and Rachel Savez, Mowett's mistress, was found dead shortly after."

"And you found out about this how?" Lex asked.

"I found an eye-witness," Tippit said, and did not give any additional information. "He's been taken care of," he added after a short pause. "Available if his testimony is required, but otherwise rendered harmless."

Tucked away in one of Lex's safe houses, then. Lex nodded to himself.

"Good. I wasn't aware of the fact, but you also provided me with the identity of the man who assisted Edge with my," he smirked bitterly at himself, "abduction."

"Sir." Vaguely questioning.

Lex smiled. "Good work, Tippitt. I'll know how to reach you when I have need of your services again. Make sure to report any expenses you've made."

"Y-yes, Mister Luthor." Relief and incredulity. Lex hung up, laughing silently. He liked to keep his employees on their toes; Tippitt was so far up on his he could become a ballerina.

He spent a few moments reading and learning by heart every single personal detail he could find in Bernard Simmons' file, then he picked up his phone again and called the police to notify them of the identity of Edge's accomplice. He also mailed Simmons' files to his father. The chance that either Simmons or Edge was still in America, let alone Kansas, was extremely unlikely, but it never hurt to put another pair of hounds on their backs.

The Unread Messages list had stopped growing and now stood at 62. Lex glanced from the endless rows of bold-printed subjects to his phone messages A4, sighed and picked up his cell again.

He spent the next two hours on the phone, was congratulated with his speedy recovery, flooded with sometimes genuine and sometimes clearly false sympathy, and once threatened that if he thought his association with Nikolai Martrov was of such little importance that he didn't bother calling him back within a day, said Mr. Martrov would end said association right now. That one made him laugh out loud, much to the antagonism of the Russian gentleman.

"Mister Martrov," Lex said—in English, because although Martrov's English was quite abominable, his Jekaterinenburg accent was so heavy that Lex, whose Russian was imminently passable but by no means perfect, couldn't understand half of what Martrov was saying if he spoke his polluted form of Russian. "Mister Martrov, I do apologize for the delay, but I can assure you that I had a very good reason for not immediately replying to your call. I was shot."

Silence on the other end of the line, apart from some boar-like snorting. Then: "Shot," the Russian repeated disbelievingly. Either Lex's near-demise had been of no consequence at all in the former USSR, or Martrov had thrown his vodka bottle through the television screen again. His temper was twice as combustible as Lex's own; when Lex had stayed over for a HazOP meeting, Martrov had managed to ruin one TV and one computer screen that way.

"Yes," Lex affirmed. "I was shot. The day before Christmas."

"You were shot," Martrov said again. Then he started to laugh uproariously, said a few things in his own slang, told Lex he was sorry to hear of his injuries, wished him a fast recovery and then went on with the business of the day, being the construction of an oil refinery near Wladiwostok.

Russians were somewhat peculiar, at times, even though they excelled at building oil pipes.

By four, Lex was exhausted. He had finished the first A4 paper and replied to several emails, but instead of diminishing, the list only seemed to grow longer. When he noticed that his forehead began to droop towards his keyboard he blinked wearily at the demandingly flashing _You've got mail_ icon, muttered 'you know what? Fuck you' to Outlook, shut down his computer and rubbed his eyes with cold fingers. Ever since Edge had relieved him of a few liters of blood, he had trouble keeping warm.

"Isn't it a lucky coincidence," he told himself as he stiffly got to his feet, "that I have a six by six bubble bath?"

He had the foresight to gather some clean clothes together and bring with him into the bathroom, instead of needing to dig them out of his closet wrapped in nothing but a towel, thereby losing all bath-gained warmth. With a certain relish he picked out a grayish-lavender shirt—there was nothing it could clash with, anymore. But when he had stripped and was confronted with his own image by the mirror wall in that bathroom, his satisfaction melted away.

Damn it, but he'd gotten USED to having hair! Even though the color had been horrid, and it was more of a fuzz than something even approaching a fine mop, and it came with that endless annoyance: beard growth still…It was a bit of a shame, really. He was glad it was gone, glad to be back to being himself…but a tiny, vain, jealous part of him lamented the loss of normalcy with an unexpected but piercing wail of sorrow.

Maybe that was because he still looked like crap heated up in the microwave. _Well, no_, he corrected himself, _not exactly like crap_. In fact, considering the circumstances, he looked pretty damn smart. If vampire-pale was smart. If a number of green-yellow bruises (leftovers from that fencing match that took place, say, 1000 years ago), a zipper made of stitches on his temple, and bands of gauze wrapped around three limbs and one shoulder were smart.

_And I've lost weight, _he thought morosely, as he waited for the tub to fill. _At least a pound or four. _

Whether it was the result of his fast metabolism or an ordinary fluke of nature he didn't know, but he'd gotten stuck at 175 pounds at around 20, and never gained or lost more than one pound since. He could afford to gain weight, if not much.(He'd tried to create some muscle mass after his little fall-out with Clark, but apparently his body simply wasn't suitable for developing a Herculean sculpted physique. He just became a little more solid. And the moment he stopped working out like a madman and cramming himself full of proteins he slunk right back down to 175 pounds within two days. Not being particularly fond of marathons on the treadmill, huge amounts of meat and heaps of potatoes, he decided to leave the super hero body to those who could maintain it and went to fetch himself a glass of Scotch.)

He couldn't afford to lose any, because it instantly made him seem skinny instead of 'slender' or 'lean', as he liked to be described. Well, if one's hipbones were showing (it wasn't his ribs that showed first, it was his hipbones), one was definitely on the negative of the 'lean' side. _Isn't that great? Three weeks of this have accomplished what three months on an abandoned island could not achieve._

Women were always ecstatic when they'd starved themselves out of a few pounds. Lex desperately wondered how quickly he could get them back. He sighed at the sight of his stomach. Apart from the unsightly bruise, he also appeared to have lost at least two cans of his six-pack. _At least I didn't get flabby. Or worse, chubby. _He shot a wry grin at his naked reflection. _A chubby, red-haired Luthor. God, I'd have been like a Leprechaun. No, better to be bald and white and skinny than a red tubby. _

After winding the plastic wraps around the bandages around his legs and checking that there were enough hand holds for him to get both in and out of the bath, and that the tub wasn't so full he would soak the bandage on his shoulder, he briefly hesitated over the collection of bath foams, gels, lotions and salts stashed in a cabinet. He didn't even know who'd supplied him with all those bottles, but there was enough to last him for a decade or so—maybe more if he didn't take a bath every day.

Bath salt was out. He'd like to enjoy his bath, not re-disinfect his wounds.

Gel, then, though he had to pay attention to its scent. One time, after a seven-hour, brain-wracking meeting he had carelessly selected one called 'Apple & Cinnamon', and realized only when, unbidden, pictures of the Kent house hold entered his mind, that he was sitting in a bath that smelled of apple pie. That HE was smelling of apple pie. That, even though he rinsed thoroughly, he was absolutely REEKING of freshly baked apple pie. Later that evening, a pretty brunette told him she'd like to eat him, and he'd let her, and though she'd complained that he was far too salt and bitter for apple pie and he quite enjoyed it, he had made a mental note in his list not to use the Apple & Cinnamon bath foam ever again.

"Apple pies are so damned vulnerable," he muttered to himself, and picked something that smelled subtly of pine trees.

Four thirty. He didn't expect Chloe before nine. More than enough time to soak for a while, order up dinner and read through a number of business proposals. Lex carefully lowered himself in his bath, turned pink and sighed with contentment.

Then he frowned.

He'd forgotten the whiskey.

Chloe spat out her chewing gum before entering the lobby of Lex's penthouse. Somehow, she was sure she'd be arrested if she dared to befoul the gilded dustbin gleaming beside the elevator.

She clicked inside, made her way over to the front desk and flashed her teeth at the crew cut man behind the counter. "Hi. I am Chloe Sullivan. I'm here to see Mister Luthor."

"Yes ma'am," the man said, making her feel about 50. "He's expecting you. Please go right on up." His smile was polite but nothing more. This man, Chloe thought, would forever be in the dark. He was a waste of wattage.

She nodded, reigning in her grin. "Thanks."

It really was amazing, she thought, how every single thing in this building screamed wealth. From the ivory buttons to the glass-covered walls, even the elevator made her feel poor, and she wasn't even talking about the marble-floored entry hall, the uniformed staff, the genie waiters. _The elevator really should have a bell boy_, she thought. _Impractical though it would be. _

When she stepped out of the elevator, though (the modest 'ping', as well, sounded distinguished and arrogant) the surroundings ceased to impress her. The entire day she'd been upbeat and hyperactive without exactly knowing why, but when she climbed out of her car and put on her boots, she'd realized it was really quite plain: she was going to see Lex. When exactly the prospect of seeing Lex had become something that made her bounce on her feet she didn't know, but somehow the feeling had snuck inside of her and made her feel like cheering.

Well, I didn't get to live out my fantasy during Christmas…Would he be up to those windows yet? Probably not…

She caressed the bell before pushing it, trying in vain to repress the face-splitting grin she was wearing.

Lex's door didn't creak, it opened as soundlessly and smoothly as the elevator door, providing her with an entrance to the billionaire's lair. Even though she'd been here three times now, it still caused a flutter in her stomach. The Smallville mansion had cowed her, but never excited her. Perhaps because it was all Lionel, and reflected almost nothing of Lex's personality. The penthouse, on the other hand, was Lex all over. A weird mixture of excess and asceticism. Impersonal extravagance made homely by a few very personal touches.

"Hey," he said, opening the door wide and facing her with an expression that was the Luthor version of her own beam. "Glad you could make it. How was your trip?"

She stepped inside and wondered if she should jump him in the hall, or at least get out of her coat and make it into a proper room before she made any move.

Lex smirked. She didn't think she knew anyone else who could put so much sexual promise in just a twitch of the corner of his or her mouth. Chloe struggled with the buttons of her coat. By then, Lex was leading her into the sitting room, and the chance to jump him in the hall had passed. A new chance rose on the horizon.

"Fine. Boring. Spent largely admiring brake lights in traffic jams. Productive, I guess. How about yours?"

Lex smiled. "Much the same. Boring yet productive." He limped, but she only noticed because she was actively paying attention. The hallway was dark; she blinked at the flood of warm light coming out of the sitting room.

"Please, sit," said Lex, lowering himself on the couch with a carefulness beautifully masked as languidness. "Wine?"

"Yeah, thanks." She sat down in an expensively overstuffed chair and regarded him intently. He was back to being himself, which meant hairless, pale, and composed. If she hadn't known he was shot down only five days ago, she wouldn't have believed it. The last few weeks had left him thinner and paler than before, sleeker than ever. He still had a band-aid on the right side of his head, the bridge of his nose suddenly seemed very sharp. But the look of self-satisfaction was back, and even if she did kind of miss the red spikes (she'd just gotten used to them, too!), she was awfully glad to see him back to normal, completely in control, arrogant and smug in that unique way that made him Lex, and that, she realized, had been lacking when Amy blocked his freakishness.

"So," she said, taking a sip of rosé and wincing at the combination of xylitol gum and wine. "You're yourself again."

"Yes," Lex said contentedly. "I'm back." He leaned back on the couch in a half-sprawl that had nothing of the awkwardness of illness and everything with a more sophisticated caveman clobber routine. "You are sitting very far away."

Smiling—the man didn't waste any time, that was for sure—she got up, then stopped, considering.  
"Are we going to have sex?"

"I should think so?"

"Right here, on the couch?"

"I don't think I can handle the windows just yet," Lex said dryly. "Why?"

"Because then I'll bring my bag."

"Your bag?"

"Safe sex?" Chloe reminded him.

He clacked his tongue and stuck his hand up the lampshade of the lamp behind him. "I've got that covered."

"No," said Chloe incredulously. "You don't."

"I do."

"Lex, you can't have condoms stuck inside your lamp."

"That sounds pretty...ambiguous."

"You're bluffing. You have got to be bluffing."

Lex smirked. "Try me."

She gawked. The smirk spread out until it covered his entire face. "No," she said, "I don't believe you. I just...I don't believe you." She watched breathlessly as he scratched at something on the lamp post, removed it and showed it to her, then stared, mouth open, as he held up a single Durex wrapper as if it was a gold coin.

Laughter bubbled up from the bottom of her stomach. "You..." she could hardly speak from grinning, "You keep condoms...up your lamps?"

"One lesson I learned early in life," Lex said, trying very hard to keep a straight face, "you should always be prepared."

_Scar in 'The Lion King' has never put it this aptly._

Chloe lost it. One moment she thought she could just chuckle and then jump him, but something about the way he said it, or the smug expression on his face, or maybe just the IDEA of Lex ponderously going through his entire house to hide condoms for no other reason than to baffle any future girlfriends...was so brilliantly hilarious that she sank down on the couch and simply howled with laughter.

"Oh god," she gasped as the spasm released her, and wiped her streaming eyes. "Lex, you're totally insane, do you know that?" 

"I'd call it creative, or perhaps innovative." He tossed the thing on the table, and regarded her with twinkling eyes. "Come here."

She moved over and sat down next to him, leaned over and kissed him.

Lex winced.

"Oh, sorry!" She pulled back from his shoulder.

Lex grunted, pulled her back, kissed her, turned his body so he could pull her closer…and hissed, stiffening in pain.

"I'm sorry!"

He exhaled forcefully, annoyance furrowing his brow.

"Maybe," Chloe suggested, "we should wait for a bit, you know, until you…"

"No," Lex said, brooking no argument. He twisted until his back was propped up against the arm rest, slowly pulled both legs on the couch, spread them with only the slightest grimace of pain and put his hands on Chloe's shoulders. "Just…don't lean on my right side." As she hesitated he pulled gently. "Come on. Closer."

With some kind of tiger crawl Chloe advanced over the couch and positioned herself on her knees between his legs. She looked for a place she could put her hands so she could lean close enough to kiss him and to keep from falling over and knock him out altogether. Not on his shoulders. Not on his thighs either. Not on…

"Oh for god's sake, I'm not made of glass," Lex said exasperatedly, grabbed her arms and yanked her to his chest. Her mouth opened in an exclamation of concerned protest but he simply claimed it and delved in, swallowing any sound she would have made.

_Lex really is very good at kissing._

_Hmm. Guess he really doesn't want to wait. _She only just managed not to say anything about a gun in his pocket, and that was because more because her tongue was currently occupied than because the inclination wasn't there. She shifted her weight to do something about that annoying shirt he was wearing—and he stiffened again with a startled whimper. _Right. Squashing his thigh between me and back of couch…not pleasant._

She pulled back with a jerk, half guilty, half worried and beginning to get frustrated. "For fuck's sake, Lex, let's please go to bed where we have some maneuvering room, shan't we?"

_Observe here the superb subtlety of Chloe Sullivan, intrepid reporter and skilled seductress. _

"Eager, aren't we?" Lex smirked, yet she did note that he sat up straight away when she got to her feet.

"Tell that to the crowbar in your pants, rich boy. Here," she held out her hand, which he regarded with amused wariness, "didn't they offer you crutches at the hospital?"

"I'm more of a cane person, myself," Lex said, clasping her hand and allowing her to draw him up. "Those with hidden compartments for brandy and knives, and such. Still, I'd take a gun over a cane any day." Once he was standing he seemed stable enough, although his face was a little too pale for comfort.

_That happens when the blood leaves for a holiday down south, _Chloe reminded herself. _That's why he isn't making any sense, either: no blood in his brain. It's really no big deal. I probably shouldn't worry until he starts fainting all over the place._

"Well," said Lex, picking up the bottle of wine from the table, "are you coming, then?"

Chloe grinned. Somehow, things with Lex never went quite the way she expected.

Chloe had been right: the bed WAS much more comfortable. She could hover over him without touching a single part of him but his mouth—which was great, really, but only for a specific amount of time. As he was lying flat on his back in the middle of his bed with Chloe bridging his body with her knees on either side of his hips and her upper body balanced on hands positioned at the height of Lex's shoulders, Lex was beginning to get increasingly anxious that he was never going to get to touch more than her mouth at all.

He was touched that she didn't want to hurt him. He really was. But how was he supposed to get her out of that sweater—let alone her bra—if she refused to lower herself on top of him?

Answer: either pull her down or lean up so the respective fastenings came into reach.

Unfortunately his shoulder wouldn't let him do the latter, and whenever he tried the former she resisted him, and he didn't want to pull too hard because if she _dropped_ instead of carefully _lowered_…Well, he was pretty damn hard but somehow he didn't think his libido could withstand that kind of pain just yet.

_Coward. Sissy boy_.

_Fuck you Dad, and get out of my head while I'm having sex, will you?_

So, they were having a bit of a stalemate. Chloe seemed perfectly happy kissing him, and if he got anymore happy he'd probably burst out of his pants—which would at least get one part of him undressed. Her sweater now hung scrunched up around her neck, he'd pushed up her bra, being unable to reach the fastening, and it must be rather uncomfortable digging into the soft flesh of her breasts, and the nipples he rubbed with his thumb felt hard like peas and probably tasted much better but she was STILL just kissing him and keeping that sweet five inch distance.

Wait. How could he have been so stupid? Anemia indeed; he was in desperate need of more blood. She was wearing a skirt, right? Yes. A short skirt. Tights or thigh hi? He slid his left hand down (making sure not to touch himself because that might result in embarrassing masturbatory actions while having sex, or rather attempting to have sex with a perfectly doable partner), then up her leg. Smooth, silky fabric. Higher. Chloe moaned into his mouth and kneaded her fingers into the duvet next to his ears. Lex quivered. He ran his fingers up on the inside of her thigh, almost sobbing with relief when the fabric thickened, then ended a few inches below the crease of her thigh. Thigh high stockings. What a lovely invention.

He hooked his fingers under the crotch of her panties and slid one finger into the wet heat, like he should have done ten minutes ago.

"Lex," Chloe gasped, and Lex replied agreeably, if a little breathlessly, "If you aren't going to take off all your clothes and fuck me now, I'm going to go into apoplectic shock and die and then you'll have murdered me. Your choice."

Her reaction was to straddle him, a huff of disbelieving laughter and a soft, "Wow." His shoulder didn't like the way his back arched, even though it was an involuntary reaction. The good thing was that he could now tear that horrible sweater over her head, and that she had access to the evil buttons that kept his shirt closed.

He was just clawing at the zipper of her skirt when she gasped. "Good god, what's this? Did they drop anything on you during the operation?"

"What?" Lex asked hazily. She pointed at the mostly-healed weal in the indeed spectacular if fading green-yellow bruise on his belly. "Oh that. No, that's from fencing."

_Ah, there you are!_ He pulled down the zipper, slapping her hip to indicate she could step out of it now.

"Fencing?" Chloe's eyes bulged. "Who'd you fence with? They should be prosecuted for physical abuse!"

"My dad," Lex said with a grin. "It's no big deal, Chloe."

"No big deal? Jesus Christ, it's the size of my fricking hand!"

Lex lightly dropped his right hand on his stomach, hiding his bruise. He took her hand in his left, more to keep it away from his skin than from romantic tendencies. He didn't want her lamenting his bruises. He wanted her sitting in his lap and pretending he was a rodeo horse. "Chloe. I'm not being valiant or anything. It really is no big deal. This is just what happens if you let your guard down during fencing.

"Clark played soccer, didn't he? I'm sure he must be banged up pretty badly by the end of…oh, no, wait! Clark doesn't GET any bruises, does he?" The moment he'd said it, he wished he could take it back. One look at Chloe's face made him PRAY he could take it back.

"Lex," she said, and he said, "Yes, I know," but she was not to be deterred. "Lex, don't you think…"

"Yes, you're right."

"…it is downright unhealthy…"

"I know, I know!"

"…to bring Clark Kent into bed…"

Lex winced.

"…and talk about his bruises?"

"Yes," he said, "you're absolutely right. Sorry."

She got up and he almost made a grab for her, but she only left him long enough to kick off her skirt, her boots, and everything else she was wearing, which gave him the opportunity to divest himself of his.

Because, even though there was plenty of passion, first Chloe's over-carefulness and then Lex's comment on Clark had killed any frenzy, there now was a moment of awkwardness. They were both naked, and if Chloe could read Lex as well as she thought she could he wanted to do nothing else but grab her and screw her silly…but as all those bandages so harshly reminded her, if there was any grabbing to be done it would have to be done by her, not him. The dressings daunted her a little. When they'd been covered by clothes Lex's reaction to a badly placed touch had been the only indication of his injuries, now she was confronted with real wounds.

_What if I hurt him?_ She kept thinking. _What if he starts bleeding again?_

_Nonsense. He's fine. See that? That expression is called 'impatience'. It is quite dangerous when it appears on a Luthor's face. And see that? It's called 'hard on', and usually doesn't appear when someone is near death or in a lot of pain._

_Move it, Sullivan. Bandages or not, he's got a really hot body and it owes you even if it can't handle windows just yet._

Even as she turned back to him she studied the planes of his body and as she took in the bruises, cuts and bandages on and against that white skin it occurred to her that she'd never seen him naked when he had hair.

Lex sucked his stomach in. "What?" he asked—and was that self-consciousness? Lex Luthor, being self-conscious? Of what? Those bruises?

She grinned, trailed one finger from the hollow between his clavicles down his chest, stopping just below his navel. "Nothing…Just…Damn. Now I'll never know whether you were a real…natural…redhead."

Lex stared at her for a long period before shaking his head and saying, "Believe me, I am. Was. Sorry. I didn't know you were interested in the color of my pubic hair. Next time I suddenly sprout hair I'll get you some samples."

"Ugh."

"Your mental image, not mine," he said smugly, and then it turned out that she'd been wrong about her having to do all the grabbing; he was still very much capable of doing that himself.

"Lex, watch out, I'll…"

"Just mind my right side," he said, pulled her over him like a blanket, kissed her for a few more minutes, got himself cellophane-wrapped and then prodded her into position until she was sitting astride of him.

Chloe blinked. _Er…how did he just do that?_ But then habit took over and she started to move, and then arousal took over from habit and gave her a rhythm, slow and careful at first, then, as Lex showed no signs of pain whatsoever and splayed his hands on her waist, pulling her even closer she went faster, took him deeper. He thrust back at her with small, measured movements that were growing steadily less controlled, his left hand moving up to caress her breast, her neck, to trail softly over her cheek and lips. She caught that hand, pressed it against her mouth, kissed its palm, then leaned down and kissed his smiling mouth before going back to her lazy cadence. She felt as if she could keep doing this for the rest of the entire evening.

"Chloe," Lex whispered urgently, but she just kissed him again and purred against his neck when he nipped her nipple.

He was muttering something, too low to understand but constantly. She changed her rhythm, just a little, and he gasped, fingers tightening on her hips, rocking up, up, up, into her, pushing her a little bit closer to release with every roll of his pelvis. With her on top he had no way to quicken his pace and Chloe was delighting in the easy, almost languid motion. She had the feeling that if Lex had been stronger, she'd be squashed all the way through the mattress against the frame of his bed, but he wasn't, and she liked it this way.

Unhurried. Sweet. Safe. There was no way she could hurt him.

She drew her fingers over smooth skin and tiny pink nipples, over cold-soft gauze and band aids and he moaned, and suddenly she could hear what he was panting and it was 'Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on…' and if that made her belly tighten, the half-desperate tilt of his head sent a flush of heat between her legs. She spread her thighs further and stopped playing around—she couldn't have continued if she'd wanted to. Lex's neck arched, baring his throat completely; a long column of the most vulnerable white. On impulse, she leaned forward and placed a sucking kiss on his Adam's apple, biting gently—and when he made another sound she could feel it through her lips as well as hear it and he thrust _up_, hard and desperate, further than he should be able to, further than he probably should with his legs all shot like that but he did, pressing her hips down while he shifted her entire weight a few inches into the air.

That did it.

No more lazy sex.

She rode him frantically for a few seconds and then "Come…on!" Lex snarled and like an obedient slave, she let go and came. Hard.

"Fuck…" she heard him gasp, and his body tensed under hers, curled up around her, holding on for dear life while she clenched around him like a vise. He was still twitching when she came fluttering down from her orgasmic high and dropped her head on his chest.

"Ahhhh…simultaneous orgasm," she murmured dreamily. "You don't get that very often. We're made for one another, Lex. What do you say, huh? Want to hook up with me?"

"Could you please remove your head from my shoulder?" was what Lex said, voice tight with pain, and she shot upright so fast she almost whiplashed herself.

Lex lay back, breathing heavily, eyes closed. Chloe frowned. The flush on his face was rapidly fading, instead leaving a freckled pallor that was downright disturbing. "Lex? Are you ok? Did I hurt you?"

He smiled briefly. "No...you didn't. I think maybe I did, though."

"Jesus Christ. Sex isn't worth dying for, you know!" Gingerly, she pulled away and lay down beside him, anxiously searching all those bandages for blood. She felt only slightly better when all she saw was pure, clean white.

"I happen to disagree." He closed his eyes, subconsciously rubbed his shoulder, then opened them with a snap. "I'm fine. I'm back to being me, right, so you don't have to worry about me. Besides, pain is supposed to be a major turn-on." He smiled. "So are you, of course."

"I'm a pain?" Chloe asked, mock-insulted.

Lex grinned. "Agony," he drawled, and even that he managed to make sound sexy. Without looking he plucked away the condom, tied it, and threw it into the general direction of his dustbin. Chloe actually whistled when he hit it dead center.

"You're really good at that, aren't you?"

"What? Oh, that. Well, I had a lot of practice."

"You make me feel so special, Lex. Really."

"What? No. No! I mean with basketball!"

He looked so comically distressed that Chloe began to giggle. Her irrepressible imagination now pictured Lex throwing used condoms through basketball hoops, and the image was too funny to swallow and ignore. She snickered. Lex raised an eyebrow, starting to grin as well. Chloe started to laugh, then to guffaw. She spent the following two minutes on her side, holding her stomach, limp with laughter—though really, it wasn't all that funny. Lex studied her with a commiserating expression on his slowly flushing face.

"Let me summarize your course of action, and try to determine the cause of your hilarity," he said dryly, electing more whoops and giggles. "First you laugh at me for keeping birth control aids up my lamp." Chloe chortled. "Then," he continued, "you screw the living daylights out of me. Then you plant your forehead into my shot wound—which is rather intimate, in a Freudian, twisted kind of way. Following that, you first worry about my well-being and start feeling guilty—don't interrupt, I know you did—and then you're miffed because of my perfect pitch," Chloe snickered, "and finally you start laughing at me again." He sighed. "I'll never understand women."

"I just have a healthy sense of humor."

"Healthy?"

"Don't say it as if I'm a leper!"

"Do you want more wine?"

_I think it's a really good thing we found Amy and made her turn him back to normal,_ Chloe thought. _He'd be dead because of alcohol abuse within a year otherwise._ "No, thanks."

But Lex made no move to pour himself more wine either, instead lay on his back, finally beginning to look satiated instead of pained. Checking on which side of him she was—the left—she carefully snuggled up to him and he wrapped his arm around her, forcing her to more or less paste herself flat against his side. He made an impatient sound, pulled the arm she kept tucked against her chest over his own and positioned it over his stomach so that she could drape herself a bit more comfortably.

Chloe winced, thinking of that bruise. As if he guessed what she was thinking Lex pressed down on her hand, that was lying squarely on top of that bruise.

"It doesn't hurt," he clarified, stopped pressing and caressed the back of her hand. "And you can rest your head on my shoulder; you'll get a crick in your neck if you keep it up like that."

"I'm just scared I'll hurt you."

"You won't."

She snickered. "No, you'll do it yourself." She did put her head on his shoulder, though, and when he didn't groan or wince, she relaxed. Apparently it really was all right as long as she kept to the left.

He shot her a lop-sided smile. "I'll heal. Thanks to Amy, I'm healing again. Although," he pondered with a slight sarcastic tone in his voice, "she was, of course, also the one who took my lovely regenerative system away in the first place."

Chloe moaned. "Ok, ok, you can accuse me now. I know! If it hadn't been for me you wouldn't have had two weeks of hangovers, flu, stubble and pain. I know! I'm sorry!"

"Almost three weeks," Lex corrected pitilessly.

Chloe whined. "I know," she whimpered. "I know. But, Lex…You were so CUTE with those red spikes!"

Lex huffed out a laugh, but his arm tightened around her and if his expression was supposed to convey anger, he really needed to work on that mask of his. "I suppose I'll forgive you for those three weeks of hell, brought on by your obsessive desire to see me with cute red spikes," he said generously. "After all, you did strip for me in the middle of the forest."

"Mm. And without music, too."

"I never did get the chance to put money in your cleavage."

"I never got to showing you my cleavage." She pressed her face against the smooth skin of his chest, gave it a small lick. He didn't taste of anything particular, not even salt, just warm and clean. Not like blood. Soft and whole and more or less healthy. Not like blood. She repressed a shiver, all of a sudden not at all amused anymore. She tugged at the rumpled duvet and pulled it up to cover the both of them—and those horrible bandages—up.

"So," Lex murmured, almost to himself it seemed, "what can I give to you to show my appreciation? It's so difficult to express your gratitude to people from Smallville. They always seem to think you're buying them off…" He tilted his head, looking at her face with both his natural cat-like smile and a tiny line between his eyebrows.

"You don't need to give me anything," Chloe rushed in, and the line deepened.

"I know I don't need to give you anything. But I'd like to." His eyes fastened on the ceiling again. "I mean, I could give you my body, but it's both second hand and the merchandise is damaged—besides, you already have it. Now, I could give you a new car, but I have experience with presenting people with cars and they're usually returned…" His gaze flicked to her face, and she gave him a slight nod. She was fond of her little Honda. Lex sighed.

Chloe felt a little sorry for him. Here he was, with all that money, and no one he actually wanted to flood with presents wanted any of it.

Suddenly he perked up. "What about clothes?"

"Clothes?"

"Yes! I'm sure that after that unfortunate scene in the forest you came home to find all your precious clothes rotting away in your dryer. Not to mention those blood stains I must have made on your coat. Since I am indirectly, or maybe even directly to blame for the horrible fate of your clothes, it wouldn't be more than fair for me to lend you my credit card and let you go shopping with it for a day or so, would it?"

"Lex, you really don't need to…"

"Don't you like shopping for clothes?"

"I love shopping sprees. But…"

"Good. Where'd you want to go shopping? Paris? London? Amsterdam?"

"Paris?" Despite herself, an innocent greed filled her modest heart. A clothes-shopping spree in Paris…with a limitless amount of cash or rather plastic…a perfect dream come true…

"Sure," he said, happy to have found her weak spot. "why not? It's a couple of hours' flight, but well worth it. You could even bring a friend to go shopping with."

"You don't like to go shopping with a fashion-crazed woman?" Chloe teased.

Lex grinned. "Only the first hour or so. Women, it appears, may generally be physically weaker than men but their constitution when it comes to shopping dwarfs any man's. I'd be worn out before you'd even finished the first half of Avenue Montaigne. I'm all for romantic dinners with candlelight and fashion shows but an eight-hour shopping marathon is…You're drooling, by the way."

Chloe wiped at her chin. "Sorry. You know," she tilted up her head, "a bunch of flowers would have been fine too."

"I know," Lex said softly. He stroked her shoulder.

"…could I bring Lois? She'd so love to come."

"Of course you can bring Lois, if you can persuade her to set foot in my plane, of course." His smile turned a trifle malicious. "We could lose her somewhere in the Louvre. Do a little 'Da Vinci Code' reenacting."

"Lex."

"…or sabotage the Eiffel Tower elevator…"

"Lex!"

"Or take her for a nice boat trip on the Seine; I heard the water can be incredibly unruly at times…"

"Lex!" Out of habit, she thumped his arm, then cringed as she felt cotton against her knuckles.

"Ouch," said Lex dryly, not moving a muscle.

"Oh god I'm sorry!"

"Next time if you want to hurt me, aim a little lower, then you'll hit my shot wound."

She furtively stroked the undamaged skin above the bandage. "I'm really sorry."

"You're such a violent woman. There must be so much rage hidden behind that sweet, innocent face of yours…"

"You can overdo it too, you know," Chloe grumbled, and he laughed. For some time they simply lay there, wrapped around one another. Chloe trailed lazy fingers over Lex's chest, neatly skirting around his shoulder bandage. His eyes were closed, but when she raised her head a little to see whether he was asleep they opened at a slit.

"I thought you'd fallen asleep."

"I'm done falling asleep on you. It won't happen again."

She chuckled. "I don't mind." She couldn't resist an experimental yawn. Lex observed her with an amused quirk of his mouth.

"Chloe. I get through daily meetings with people who think 'lengthy' is a synonym for 'interesting' without yawning my head off. You will not infect me—not while you're lying next to me naked, anyway."

"I still wouldn't mind," Chloe argued. "If you're tired, just go to sleep." She'd never seen him sleep before, not really, anyhow. Not lying in a bed together with her with the intention to actually GO TO SLEEP.

"Nevertheless," Lex said stubbornly, "I'll see you asleep before me."

"That sounds a bit threatening?"

"Well," said Lex, "I do have this sledge hammer hidden in my bedside table. When I'm ready to nod off I'll use it to knock you out so I can close my eyes with a clear conscience."

Chloe snorted and immediately inhaled something. She sneezed, rubbed her nose, sneezed again and sniffed. "I think I'm coming down with something."

Lex leaned away from her, suddenly wide awake. Then he smiled, tenderly, worriedly, mindbendingly evilly. He pulled up the duvet to her chin, tucked it in around her neck. "Don't worry," he said, voice dripping honey. "I won't let anything happen to you. I know exactly what to do when facing illness. Would you like some coughing syrup? I still have about a gallon. Are you quite comfortable? You may have a fever; perhaps I should go and get my thermometer?"

"You are scaring me," Chloe said.

"You know you don't mean that," Lex said serenely. He kissed her on the tip of her nose. "You just rest, alright? Would you like some tea? I hear it's an excellent remedy for a cold..."

She whined, and he smiled. "Open your mouth."

"Why?"

"Remedy for flu. Say 'Ah'."

"If you're checking for a blue tongue you'll be sadly disappointed."

"Next time I'm feeding you Blue Curacao. Now open."

She opened her mouth just a tiny bit. Lex's mouth closed over hers and he proceeded to attempt to lick her vocal cords. Wow. Deepthroat by tongue. He even managed to make it feel good instead of strangulating. And apparently kissing her was just as stimulating to Lex as it was to her because at one point he released her mouth with a plop and started hunting around for rubbers again. Or at least that was what she thought he was doing when he lifted an alarm clock and peered underneath it.

"I _am_ on the pill," she said, raising herself on her elbow.

He halted his search. "What kind of pill? The name, I mean."

"Microgenon. It thickens the wall of my, um, egg."

Lex opened a drawer. "I see. Unfortunately, the wall of your egg is no match for my seed, no matter how thick it is. You see," he fished something out of the drawer, "most men's semen looks like a school of tadpoles. Tadpoles can't penetrate enforced walls. Mine, however, and I checked this under the microscope, looks like a school made up of tiny little Chuck Norrises. Armed with explosives." He flashed her a brilliant smile. "I have meteor freak sperm. Unless you want Amy to come and do her number on me again I'm afraid you'll have to deal with Durex."

_"Let's get out of here," Edge shouted._

_The man holding Chloe protested. "We've got to check if he's…"_

_"Get out of here!"_

_"But the woman! And what if he isn't dead!"_

_"I just shot him through the goddamn head!" Edge snarled. "If he isn't dead, he'll soon be. Let's go!" _

_"But the woman…"_

_"Leave her here. Let's GO!" The hands that had held her arms twisted behind her back pulled away even as Edge was speaking. The door slammed, his voice was cut off and Edge and his accomplice drove away, leaving Chloe all alone in the deafening silence of the forest. The sound of the engine and wheels crushing snow disappeared as suddenly as if the car had gone up in smoke. _

_Chloe ran to where Lex was lying, stumbling over her own feet. She wasn't so much crying as expelling water; tears coursed down her cheeks in such quantities it was as if she'd sprung a leak. _

_"Lex," she cried. "Lex! Don't be dead. Don't be dead, please, don't be dead, don't be dead…" When she'd reached him, she was afraid to look, but she knew she had to. She had to see. Because he wasn't dead. He couldn't be dead._

_He was lying with his face tipped up to the moon, bloodless and slack, eyes open. In the middle of his forehead, a third eye was crying a flood of blood. She called his name, shook him and got blood on her hands, but his eyes remained sightless. As she sat back on her haunches, slowly beginning to realize that he __**was**__ dead, the blood from his headshot began to fill his eye sockets until they were overflowing, and even though he was dead, dead, the blood still flowed, and she was kneeling in a pool of it, a spreading, snow-melting lake of blood that shone black in the moonlight._

_It crept up her legs, warm, then cold, and suddenly she was so consumed with terror that she would drown in this flood she shot to her feet to run away—only to find that her boots were stuck in the bloody mud and she couldn't pull away._

_Despite the panic twisting her gut, though, that was not the moment she started to scream. That was when Lex's fingers wrapped around her ankle and his red-dripping eyes fastened on her face, and his white, bleeding lips whispered, "Please. Don't leave me. Please don't leave me like this. Help me. Help me. Don't let me die alone." _

_It was that moment, the moment she knew that alone in the forest with a dead man, and that he wouldn't let her go, that she started to_

wake up.

She gave a violent kick, pulled herself out of bed and stood there, feet trembling on the lush carpet in Lex's bedroom, gasping away the remnants of her nightmare.

"Whoa."

Slowly, the surroundings penetrated the bubble of her fear, bursting it completely. She wasn't in the forest, she was in Lex's penthouse. The air wasn't cold but comfortably warm, and the zombie that had clutched her leg was twisting in the bed she'd just fled, as pale in the gloom as he'd been in the moonlight, but very much alive and, it looked like, in the throes of a dream that was about as pleasant as her own.

Chloe approached the bed with caution, afraid that if she touched those silken covers her nightmare would take over again, but all the satin covers made her feel was a desire to be underneath them again, and so she slid back into bed and observed Lex struggle with his own demons.

_I didn't dream about this, _she thought almost angrily. _I hardly even thought about it. I was fine, damn it! Why does sleeping with him bring it all back?_ Maybe it was his scent, or the feel of his body. Maybe her subconscious had saved these dreams for a time she could verify that he was actually alive. Maybe…

Lex jerked and threw up his hands into the air as if to ward off an attack and gasped out a sound that might be her name or might just be an exclamation of horror. Then his eyes opened—dark, in this light, all pupil, but free of any blood—and after a short period of blank, wide-eyed staring into space as his senses tried to convince him that everything was all right he groaned a curse and covered his face with his hands.

Lex woke up with a start, still on his back but with one hand in the air and panting as if he'd just run a mile uphill. "Fuck…" he wheezed, and rubbed his face. He could _smell_ the forest, even though the only bit of green in the room was the cover of a book. He could _feel_ the bullet in his head as it ripped through his brain and left him without any thoughts at all, even though his mind was obviously perfectly fine and having a really good time scaring him shitless. He started as a warm hand touched his chest.

"Bad dream?" Chloe whispered.

"Huh." He swallowed, and his throat clicked. "Just…getting shot again. Did I wake you up?"

"I thought you said my name." She rubbed small circles over his heart, as if to guide it back to a normal pace instead of this rampant hammering. He put his hand over hers, squeezed it, held it fast. "I had a nightmare as well."

God, was there no end to his selfishness? That poor girl! Of course she was having nightmares. Had he truly believed she'd just shake this off and merrily go on her way? The whole experience must have been as traumatic to her as it had been shocking to him.

"I'm sorry." He either seemed to be telling her he was sorry or to thank her, these days.

"That's ok. At least I dream about you getting shot," she teased, "not getting shot myself."

"Ah, yes. That must be a great improvement."

Her face was cast in shadow but he could see the glitter of her teeth when she smiled. But something was wrong with that smile, even in the darkness, and when he reached out to cup her cheek he touched wet skin.

"Oh, Chloe," he sighed, and pulled her close. "You really shouldn't cry for me. Are you alright? I'm so sorry. I never thought…"

"It's ok! Really!" Her voice _was_ steady, he noted, even though he could taste her tears on her eyelids. "This is actually the first time I dreamed about it. I'm fine. And you're fine. But…Christ, Lex, the _blood_…"

"I'm sorry."

"Don't SAY that! It isn't your fault! You shouldn't apologize for almost dying on me. I mean, I really wouldn't have appreciated it, but I wouldn't blame you. But Lex, if I hadn't had my phone…if I hadn't snuck it into my boot…"

"But you did, and you had," he said firmly, "and like you said, everything's fine."

"But if Clark hadn't found us in time…"

"But he did. And didn't you almost bite my head off for mentioning Clark in bed?"

"Lex…"

He kissed her neck, where her heartbeat was slow and steady. And her jaw. She opened her mouth, lips pursed, but he first kissed her eyelids and the tip of her nose before descending lower. Arms slid around his neck so one hand could cup the back of his head and another could stroke over his back and she smelled of fear and sex and what he suspected was Fa deodorant. She smelled of someone he ought to have protected and had failed to do so. Most of the time when he knew he couldn't protect someone, he left them with that very warning, knowing that they'd either be safer without him, or that one day, his inability to protect them would indeed get them killed and in turn hurt him so much that leaving was far preferable to staying, loving them and then watch them die.

This time, he was resolved not to walk away.

He simply didn't want to.

_I will protect you, _he promised her silently, even though it was a pretty ludicrous thing to promise with his body full of bullet holes. Maybe that was why he didn't say it aloud. Maybe…

Chloe squirmed. "Lex," she whispered, smiling wryly. "I'm…kinda sore."

Oh.

"Doesn't matter," Lex said, and pulled her as close as he could with his inadequate, damaged, weak and tender arms. "Just ignore it until it goes away."

Chloe chuckled. "Will it?" Lex blinked at her sleepily. "Nevermind." She kissed him softly, little more than a brush of lips against lips. "Sleep."

"Mm," Lex murmured, and for the third time in three weeks, fell asleep while her eyes were still open.

TBC

Note to self: Do not watch The Ultimate Showdown by Kontraband before writing sex scenes.


	21. Chapter 21

Kitty's rant:

Kitty's rant:

I was going to make this story last forever. There was going to be chapters and chapters more of fluff, violence, betrayal, despair and Lex-bashing—because face is, the man is brilliant when he's shot or drugged or insane or otherwise injured :) This part was just the beginning (300 pages of beginning…sweet!) Buuut….I seem to have lost my hyperdrive, and that means that if I'm going to start out on a sequel that isn't more or less finished in great lines in my head, like this one was (ok, certain comments kind of…influenced some part of it cough flaccidity cough) I probably won't finish it. I know how it works, and I know I'd lose interest and let it bleed dry. And I don't want that. It's horrible to leave a poor story unfinished. It's like getting someone all tied up and turned on and then walk away laughing.  I haven't been on a writing express like this one in a long, long time and it's wonderful, but my train is slowing down now so I'll wait till the nearest stop and get off for a while (I really like train metaphors. You can probably tell).

So when _Blockage (or Samson Reversed)_ is finished, I'm gonna take a short break and read up on all the great fics on this site—I haven't read a fic in ages wail. Watch some more SV. Get some more ideas. Who knows, I might write another novel. And this one isn't finished yet! There are still some things that need to be sorted out…so here we go. And, because I forgot the last time, as always thanks for reviewing!

Twenty-one: In which Clark holds out carrots and Lex faces irrational fears

The reason why Lex Luthor could not keep hold of his lovers, Chloe surmised, was not because those women were cold-hearted, manipulative bitches, nor because he was a calculating bastard himself. It was because in the end they couldn't handle the sleep deprivation. And no, she was not referring to sex.

For some reason she had decided that Lex was the kind of person who slept in a shrimp-like curl on his side, compact, neat.

As it turned out, she couldn't have been more wrong.

When she woke up early, she found herself without cover and pressed to the very edge of Lex's huge lawn of a bed, with him lying spread out in the dead center of it, legs akimbo, one arm flung out in her direction and one arm curled up on his chest. His face was turned towards her, a shadow play of curves and planes in the dim light that shone up from the outside world. He was still asleep—or maybe she should call that 'out cold'. He was breathing so slowly she was starting to worry and considered checking for his pulse before his chest rose, proving he was, indeed, in a peaceful, comatose slumber and not stone cold dead.

_The convalescent should probably not participate in laborious exercise of the kind we initiated, _Chloe thought, and smiled. She watched his eyes flick beneath his eyelids, then fall still again. Oh yes, he was pretty far gone. She was certain he'd woken up otherwise; he must have felt her stare. As it was, she took advantage of Lex's oblivion; this was the first and might be the only time she'd be able to.

In the hospital, his slack face had worried her, now, in sleep instead of unconsciousness, she thought it was charming.

Even fast asleep, he managed to look slightly sardonic, as if he were expecting to be challenged by and subsequently outwit his dreams just as he did with his acquaintances in the waking world. Lana, Chloe knew from late-night staring sessions, looked angelic when she slept, but she drooled. Clark she'd only seen asleep about once, when he was sick. He'd just looked asleep, gone from the world with his mouth half open. Lois burrowed. And snored. Most often her entire head couldn't be found in the nest of blankets she made of her bed, let alone her face.

According to Lana, Chloe burrowed as well and always stuck one foot out of bed. The only thing she knew for certain was that no matter which position she fell asleep in, she always woke up on her stomach. And she didn't drool. Nor snored. She had been known to sleepwalk when she was younger, but she didn't think she'd done any of that recently.

Lex didn't snore either, at least he hadn't so far. Maybe that was because he wasn't breathing. He was taking awfully long with—ok, that was an exhale. Chloe shivered; the room was quite comfortable but she felt vulnerable lying completely naked like this. She tugged at the duvet, trying to pry it from underneath Lex's body but he had gathered it around him like a taco shell and it wouldn't budge. She guessed she could just yank it out and to hell with his sweet slumber…but somehow, she couldn't get that over her heart. All the more reason to be miffed.

"Well then," she huffed, sitting up to check the time. Six thirty-four. She didn't need to go to work until eight, maybe even a bit later since Lex's apartment was even closer to the Daily Planet than her own. So she had one and a half hour to kill, and now she was wide awake and needed to go to the bathroom. How annoying that Lex was still so very much asleep…Then she grinned, a sharp-toothed, vindictive flash of hard ivory, and slipped out of bed.

There was something wonderfully decadent about strolling through Lex's gaudy apartment in the nude. She thoughtlessly wandered into the bathroom she'd been in before and scared herself half to death with her own reflection on the mirror wall.

_Right, yeah. That wall. No toilet in here._ A perfectly good bubble bath, but she wasn't feeling quite decadent enough to take a piss in that—although she'd like to take a bath in it, once.

_Probably will, soon. For now, other bathroom. Toilet, please?_

On her way back to the bedroom she picked up her bag, got out her phone, found herself the most perfect spot in the room and took a condemning picture of Lex hogging the bed and the covers, humming softly to herself.

"That's a nasty dent in your perfect host mask, Mister Luthor," she murmured, taking another picture just for good measure. Then her eyebrows rose, and she actually LOOKED at what she was photographing.

Lex Luthor.

Lying spread-eagled and totally oblivious in bed.

Hmmm.

The man was usually really quiet…Would he be equally controlled if he wasn't actually awake?

Drifting over to the nightstand she put down her phone, picked up the mostly-empty bottle of now luke-warm Rose, took a swallow to loosen her tongue and another gulp for luck, then crawled under the duvet in between his legs and started working on her breakfast.

"Wouldn't you have preferred croissants, or something?" Lex asked ten minutes later as he lay grinning up at the ceiling and Chloe crawled up for air beside him. He put his arm around her, movements languid and still only half-awake.

She wiped her mouth, plastered herself against his left side again. "I wouldn't mind croissants but whether I'd have preferred it…" She grinned. "I don't know…I'm nice and warm again."

"Warm? Were you cold?"

Chloe ignored him. "And that was a really nice noise you just made. Next time I must make sure to record it and use as your personal ring tone on my phone."

Lex gaped at her, aghast.

"Every time you call me, that sound will echo through the Daily Planet," she continued dreamily. "Wouldn't that be romantic?"

Lex licked his lips. "That," he said in his slowest drawl, "is the single most wickedly depraved thing anyone has ever proposed to me. I like it." His mouth widened until it almost parted his head in two, and it was hard not to imagine a small forked tongue quivering in between his lips. "I think I might return that favor."

The sheer evil in that smile made Chloe freeze, especially as he continued, "Yeeessss, I might make an entire sound scheme for my computer configuration—hear you pant my name when I start up, have you climax when I close a window, maybe that cute little gasping sound you make whenever a new message comes in…Oh, the possibilities are myriad…"

"Uh, Lex, I was only joking."

"Were you? I wonder, do I have any security cameras left? I could tape you and make .gif files of you and me for my screensaver…"

"Ok, you win!" Chloe cried, wondering with some alarm how far he would actually go.

Lex smiled, all slick reptilian satisfaction. "Of course I win. I always win."

"You didn't win the election," she said snappily.

Lex's victorious leer did not waver. "Scrrrreeeeen Saaaaaver," he purred meaningfully, and she gave up. He was right, she couldn't beat him at this game. He was just too iniquitous for her. Fine, so she wouldn't use her pictures to mentally blackmail him with proof of his boorish behavior…yet…—although she had no doubts that she could. He'd probably be horrified about his lack of consideration—or what he'd conceive as such.

Lex was so cute, really.

She gave him a little nudge. "So how are you feeling? No…drawbacks of last night?"

He shot her a lazy smile. "If I'd had hourly blowjobs like that at the hospital I wouldn't have needed morphine. Don't feel a thing."

Chloe wondered if she should feel tickled or insulted. "I'm serious," she said.

"So am I," Lex said. "Sweet, sweet endorphins. But," he sat up, wincing only a little bit as he did so, "I forget myself. You must be hungry." His mouth quirked. "At least I hope you still are."

"Don't overestimate the nourishing value of semen."

"I love it when you talk dirty like a perverted nutrition expert."

"I don't think semen is considered as a part of a wholesome breakfast."

"Pity," said Lex, and slid out of bed. "Lots of proteins. What time is it?"

"Uh, almost seven. Why?"

"I ordered breakfast at seven."

"You ORDERED breakfast?"

"Yes?" He hunted down his boxer shorts and put them on, sitting somewhat awkwardly on the edge of the bed because bending his legs hurt him. Chloe refrained from feeling sorry for him, instead rolled onto her stomach and grinned.

"I didn't know you could order breakfast anywhere else but in a hotel."

"You can order anything wherever you are," Lex said with a shrug. "As long as you pay for it. But in this house of morally corrupt, financially obese and pampered no-goods room service is quite common, I assure you. We helpless rich people don't know how to make do without a household staff to feed us. Ah," he said, as the bell rang, "right on time." He opened a closet and tossed something white into her direction, "Here, put this on. No sense in showering first and let it grow cold."

Chloe picked up the white thing and identified it as a Hilton bathrobe.

"Where'd you get this?" she asked Lex's back as he walked out of the room. "Did they send it to you?" It wouldn't have surprised her. If Nike sent movie stars free shoes hoping they'd wear them in their next video clip, it would make sense for hotels to send  
people like the Luthors free bathrobes.

Lex turned back to her and grinned. "Of course not. I nicked it." He went to answer the door.

Chloe added 'thief' to the list of moral corruptions of financially obese and pampered no-good Lex Luthor. It only occurred to her to be afraid that the person delivering their breakfast was Martin Edge back to finish the job when the person in question, an innocent boy completely undaunted by almost naked, bandaged billionaire, had put everything on the table and had left with a decent tip in his pocket.

That one-second of dread sent such a rush of adrenaline through her body it sapped the strength right out of her knees, causing her to sag against the door frame at the sight of the boy's uniformed figure. The slap of her palm against the wood made Lex look around and frown in concern as she slid to the floor, giddy with relief and the sudden lack of vitamin c in her blood.

"Chloe?" He rushed towards her and tried to kneel down next to her…and found that he couldn't—at least not without screaming in pain. "Are you alright?" He then tried to swoop her up but by the looks of it his shoulder informed him that he couldn't do that either. Chloe had started to laugh at the first well-meant but failed attempt to squat down next to her; when he tugged weakly on her arm with a muffled oath of agony she giggled helplessly.

Lex frowned. "Since you seem to be alright, could you please get up so I can fawn over you and comfort you?" he asked plaintively.

"My gallant prince." She held out her hand and he pulled her up, the one thing he could do without ripping his stitches—and that only because she used the wall for support as well.

"Gallant yet convalescing. Are you alright? Yesterday you said you might be getting sick. If you…"

She let him lead her to a chair, then gently pushed him away, embarrassed. She shook her hair in front of her face, hiding her eyes. "I'm fine. Just a spell of extreme paranoia, that's all." _You must be rubbing off on me. Next thing I'll do is borrow your bug detector and take it to work._

Lex poured her a glass of orange juice (fresh orange juice made of sweet Californian oranges, not that pulp junk from a carton). "Paranoia?"

She gulped down the orange juice, held out her glass for more. "Edge," she said, and waited for him to tell her she was being an idiot. As if anyone would break the security of this building. Lex, however, said nothing and only refilled her glass, pouring one for himself as well.

Finally, the corner of his mouth quirked up and he said, "I checked before I opened the door."

"Sorry?"

"It's good to know, although I regret that it has to be you, that I'm not the only one who keeps expecting the man to rise out of a flower pot or something to complete his objective." He opened a carton box and the divine smell of freshly baked bread wafted into her face. "You're not being paranoid," he went on quietly. "it's quite natural to be hypersensitive after being abducted. Have a croissant. If you want I can make an appointment with a psychologist—I know a few who are…"

"That's ok."

He looked up. "You're having nightmares. You've been through a traumatic experience. Seeing a psychologist…"

"Will only make me freak out," Chloe said calmly. She smeared a lump of butter on the tip of her croissant, picked a shiny red strawberry from a bowl. _It starts with a psychologist. Then a psychiatrist. First they say you are traumatized. Then they establish you are mad. Before you know it you're taken away from your husband and your small daughter and locked up in a madhouse._ "Really, I'm fine. Or I will be fine. I'm used to Smallville freaks, after all. Traumatic experiences have shaped me into the beautiful person I am now."

She half and half expected him to push her, try to convince her to go and see a shrink, but then she remembered about his own bruised mind and his extreme unwillingness to have anyone meddle with it. If there was anyone who would NOT insist she see a psychologist if she didn't want to, it was Lex. He just nodded and started to methodically stuff himself with croissants, not so much ignoring her as lost in thought.

_And I bet that if there is anyone else who was involved in this accident who will NOT have his fears rationalized for him, it will be Lex._

Chloe nibbled her own crescent of flaky pastry. It was delicious. But she was missing something. Something essential. Something _vital_. Something that, being absent, was at least as harrowing as an abduction.

"Coffee."

"I knew I'd forgotten something," Lex surfaced from his memory-dive, caught up with her straight away. He hurried to the kitchen and soon she heard the gurgling sound of some fancy espresso machine. While she waited for the coffee, Chloe finished her croissant and started on a custard pastry, beating her paranoia into submission with sugar and calories. When Lex returned, he was carrying one pot of coffee and one carafe with a golden liquid.

"Whiskey?" Chloe said incredulously.

"It's never too early for Irish coffee," Lex replied, and started to pour. She opened her mouth to tell him that by her standards, seven thirty was indeed too early for Irish coffee—but then she recalled that she'd been chugging wine roughly one hour earlier, and that she therefore shouldn't be the one to talk. Besides that, if he wanted to have whiskey with his breakfast, what was the harm in that? It wasn't as if he'd do anyone any harm.

Lex finished off his coffee with a thick dollop of cream originally intended for scones, cast a searching glance around and finally completed it to perfection with a strawberry on top. He regarded the whole of it with a satisfied expression. The man really was an irrepressible nut.

"You know what," Chloe said, grinning. "you might be right about that."

A surprised, affectionate smile broke out on Lex's face. "Really?"

She held out her cup. "Make me one, too, Lex? I still have half an hour before I need to go to work."

Chloe left with a 'So, see you tonight?' that sounded so natural Lex could do nothing but nod and suggest 'Dinner?', to which she replied 'In?' with something hopeful in her tone.

"If you want," he said, and in return she said, "I want," before kissing his nose and galloping off.

So he was going to cook again. Huh. Or have something delivered. Better. He was feeling lazy today.

When he turned on his laptop to quick-check it for new messages before hitting the shower he noticed one email dated the 30th with the subject 'Faustian contract' and decided that his shower could wait. He opened the message.

_Lex,_

_I called you. You didn't pick up. Are you available today? I'd like to get this over with as soon as possible, and your kids probably agree with me._

_So call me, will you? I happen to be in Metropolis today at eleven to pick something up. Let me know if we can get this done today. I know you still have my number._

Clark

Lex picked up his cell from the table, switched it on and found indeed two missed calls, one at eleven of last night, one at seven this morning, both from an unknown number. He had deleted Clark from his phone book for several reasons. One was that he knew his number by heart. One was that he didn't want to torment himself with make-up and exploit actions. Another was that after he'd once lost his cell (and found it back in the fridge, for some reason), he'd realized that it might not be a good idea to have Clark's number on quick dial number 8. The fewer connections between the two of them, the better. And the final reason was that Lex had a violent temper and that he'd deleted that name in a fit of anger when he came across it when he was feeling particularly low one evening.

He still knew it by heart, though.

"Hey Lex." Clark either hadn't deleted his name from his phone book, or recognized his number as well.

"Clark. You called. Early."

"Yeah, well," Lex could hear the shrug, even if he couldn't see it. "I guess you can take the farm boy out of the farm, etcetera. Although I am at the farm now, so…Never mind. I thought you never slept anyway. You got my mail?"

"Yes. Eleven should be fine. Or do you need to be somewhere else at eleven?"

"No, that's ok."

"Eleven thirty is…"

"Eleven is fine, Lex. Where?"

"L.C. Tower," Lex said. "I'd like to get it first to my scientists and then to my kids as soon as possible. A couple of floors up seems as soon as possible to me, don't you think?"

"Mm. You good to go out already?" _Enemy or not, I __**will**__ be concerned for your well-being._

Lex smiled. "You'll be able to recognize me by the rose threaded through the spokes of my wheelchair."

Clark huffed out a laugh. "I was more thinking along the lines of a black cape and fangs, or maybe a pair of bat's wings."

"You haven't actually signed anything, Clark. Not in blood or plain ink. If you don't want to do this, if you don't trust me, don't. Nobody's forcing you to."

"Yeah, right."

"I'm serious. I'd be disappointed, but I would understand."

"You almost mutilated yourself to trap me into giving you my blood."

"I could have been faking."

"Sure, that blood on your leg was fake."

"Blood bag hidden underneath my pants."

"Lex…I can see through pants."

_Huh_. "How…revealing." Clark laughed, then suddenly stopped and sighed. "What?" asked Lex.

"Nothing," Clark said, and the teasing tone had left his voice. "I'll see you at eleven, then, ok?"

"Yes," said Lex, and hung up. He sat staring at his phone for a full minute, not seeing anything, listening to the blood rush through his body. _Why is it so easy to fall back into our old ways, even when our friendship is over?_ he thought._ Why do I keep trying? I don't even like him. We can barely be civilized to one another. Am I just that fascinated with the subject under my microscope or is it another power of his? Hypnotize people into undying loyalty even as they want to—no. No!_

"Everything that's left over," he muttered, rubbing his hands over his face. "I'll give everything back to you. I won't break my word on that."

To clear his mind of the tantalizing Clark Kent riddle he read his other mail, moaning aloud at the notification that he was expected to make an appearance at the New Year's Eve party at LuthorCorp's main building and make polite conversation with several important business associates. Calling in sick, Mary's respectfully put message conveyed with ruthless clarity, would not be condoned. Not even if he _was_ sick. The show must go on, as the saying went, and although the mental image of his father singing Queen was somewhat disturbing, Lex did not make himself any illusions that Daddy dearest would fail to make the show go on, whether Lex craved for a pause or not.

"At least I'll be able to drink champagne again," Lex sighed. _Without throwing it up a few hours later._ He closed his laptop with a snap and went to have his shower.

That morning was the first time he would leave his penthouse and go out on his own after Edge's son's dramatic seizure. He hardly thought about it. Didn't even consider that the last time he'd left it was to be hustled into a car and taken into a forest to be shot. He was, therefore, more than a little annoyed with himself as he was unexpectedly seized by fear the moment he was standing in front of the sliding doors of the lobby.

Everything had been fine, taking the ring from his safe, closing the door, going down by elevator, walking through the lobby. The impact of his feet on the ground sent tiny slivers of pain through his legs; still, fine. It was the moment that the doors hummed and opened, and cool breeze hit his face that he froze, heart throbbing in his throat, unable to take another step and leave the security of the building.

He noted it with interest, even when his balls pulled up with dread, his fingers started to shake and sweat broke out on his brow.

_Isn't this quaint._ He tried to take another step, but pain shot through his legs and he was quite petrified.

_I look like a total moron standing in front of these doors._ They were still open. In a few seconds people would start to turn their heads to find out where the draft was coming from. Still he was unable to move.

"Mister Luthor?"

He started violently despite himself, and stared, wide-eyed, at Victor, who was standing next to him, smiling in that distinct calm, friendly way that people who were more or less used to dealing with people in various states of shock often employed. Victor, Lex's ever-busy mind provided, had been with the fire brigade before he retired to the easier life of desk service in a spoiled brat penthouse. He'd probably dealt with traumatized idiots before.

He tried to say something witty, like 'It never struck me before how hideous the street looks from inside.' Or something at all, but all he could do was nod stiffly and stand there as if his shoes had sucked vacuum to the marble.

"Is your car standing by, sir?" Victor asked, and gently nudged his arm. The physical contact sent a small jolt through his body, and suddenly he found he was able to move again. "Shall I have a look?" Victor led the way, and Lex followed on legs as limp as boiled spaghetti.

The moment he was outside, the fear peaked again, nailing him to the ground and sucking his breath away. But again, Victor touched him, just a short tap on his arm, and it passed, even if it left him feeling even weaker. His car was parked directly in front of the building. For once he was very glad he had given in and let someone pick him up instead of attempting to drive himself. There was no way he could have handled anything with a clutch at the moment.

Victor gave him the softest push and an encouraging nod that made Lex feel even more stupid than he was feeling already. _What the hell is this? Don't tell me one measly abductions has given me agoraphobia._ He couldn't make himself smile, just inclined his head, and stepped into his car, where he dry-swallowed two of his trusty pills since impromptu blow jobs did not seem to be available and slumped tiredly into his seat.

_Well, that was unpleasant. Let's hope that will not occur again, shall we?_

But it did occur again. The moment he got out of his car and walked the few yards to LuthorCare's front door the same irrational fear coiled in his gut and around his heart, until it seemed even his pulse was laboring. Had it been the same the first few times? He'd been scared more often after kidnapping actions, but not like this. Of course, he hadn't been shot to pieces those last four times. And all previous kidnappers had been found, judged guilty and locked away. Edge wasn't. He might still be out there.

_Unlikely_, Lex thought, while he forced himself to cross the strip of road. _He wouldn't dare to stick around and try again. Not unless he's suicidal. Not unless…_

"Hey, Lex."

He nearly jumped out of his skin, in turn making Clark jump as well. But strangely enough, after that first surge of alarm at the sound of his voice, Clark's presence made him feel safer. Sheltered. Protected. He hated it. He wasn't supposed to need protection.

"Clark."

Concerned eyes that tried very much to keep a distance fastened on his face. "Are you ok?" He ventured a smile. "Don't tell me you crashed your wheel chair."

And that comment was so apt and so unexpected that it broke right through Lex's annoyance with himself and startled him into a smirk.

"Really, Clark, there _are_ vehicles I don't wreck." He put his hands in his pockets, feeling the small lead box smooth and cold against his fingers. "I don't do wheel chairs."

"No cape either."

"I figured you'd recognize me anyway. It isn't as if there are that many people of my age that answer to the same description."

Clark winced. "I'm sorry."

Lex gave a one-shouldered shrug, turned towards the door and passed through it as it zoomed open. "Why? If there is anyone in this entire sad story who ISN'T to blame for anything it's you." He nodded a greeting to those who recognized him, walking slowly so that his limp wouldn't show, and made his way over to the elevators, Clark shuffling next to him.

"Still," Clark said stubbornly. "Don't you mind having…or rather not having…you know? Being normal?" There was something wistful in the way he said it, and for a second Lex wondered whether it was difficult being Clark Kent, ordinary Kansas Farm boy with superpowers. Then he dismissed it. How could anyone not want such powers?

"I'd rather be perfect than normal," he said calmly.

Clark's mouth curved. "Perfect?"

_Hey! Bald is beautiful!_ "Perhaps I should put it differently. Not dead?" The elevator opened with the same swooshing sound. It grated over his nerves. Lex gritted his teeth and stepped inside, pressed the 23rd button. His jaws tightened again when the doors slid closed—as his only escape route was suddenly cut off some strange, near claustrophobic panic made his stomach clench. At least there was no one else in the elevator but Clark, or he might start exhibiting some seriously disturbed behavior. But like it or not, Clark's presence calmed him down, even as realizing precisely that made him feel stupid and weak.

_Functioning brain to irrational fears: hello. Knock it off already!_

"Are you sure you're alright?" Clark said, and leaned back when Lex barked, "Excellent! What makes you think I'm not?"

"Your…um…heartbeat."

Dangle, dangle went the carrot. Immediately all panic vanished. "You can see my heart beating?"

Clark leaned away a little further, then squared his jaw and said, "Hear it, actually."

He must be hearing a hardcore beat at the moment. It was fucking SKIPPING. Answers! Finally, Lex was getting answers! "You hear people's hearts beat…" he breathed. He knew the man's ears were good, but a _heartbeat_…

However, Clark put his carrot back into his pocket and looked away, focusing on the floor numbers as they flashed past. Lex studied him, mesmerized all over again. A tall, broadly built young man, handsome and somewhat naïve-looking; the kind of man women would swoon over, but nothing _really_ special. And yet he was.

He picked up grown men and ran with them in his arms to a city miles away.

He stopped cars with his body.

He heard the heart pump the blood through people's veins.

He could see through people's clothes—and who said it stopped there? What about doors? Walls? Boxes?

Not lead. Lex knew Clark couldn't see through lead. His fingers curled around the box in his pocket.

_And he's going to give me his blood. God, forgot about that one. His blood heals. Every disease you can imagine. Every fucking disease you can think of. An alien super pill. _

Ping.

_And there are more of his kind, I'm certain of it. If one ship—if two ships can crash on earth, there must be more. I may have given him may word, and I'll keep it too, but if there are others…_

"Uh, Lex?" Clark interrupted his thoughts, reminding Lex of the fact that even though he was an alien, he had being human down to perfection.

"Mm?"

"This is the 23rd floor. Unless you want to start bleeding me in the elevator…"

"No," Lex murmured. "No, that would probably not be a very good idea. Come along. I booked us a room."

The room in question was small, white, and only held a comfortable plastic chair and a table. David Reese had left, as Lex had requested that morning, a holder with ten vacuum tubes, a hypodermic needle, a handful of cotton wads and some disinfectant. The room had one window with blinds, which Lex lowered and closed once they were inside.

"So," Clark asked, gazing around warily with his hands in his pockets. "How are we going to do this?"

"Well," said Lex. "First you pull up your sweater and then I'll stick in a needle and take a few units of blood."

"You?"

"Me. Don't you trust me?" Clark snorted. Lex snorted back. "I know how to inject people," Lex added. "and how to get blood too. I'm a scientist, remember. Well, a part-time scientist, anyway. There's nothing I do better."

Clark raised an eyebrow. "My confidence rises with every word you say," he said sarcastically. "But no, my main concern was how you were planning to pierce my skin. I AM more or less invulnerable, you might remember."

"Ah yes," Lex said, pretending to be surprised at his own stupidity. "How could I forget. That would pose a problem, wouldn't it? Luckily I brought this."

He fished the small lead box out of his pocket and opened it. Immediately, Clark blanched and stumbled away from it. Lex took the gaudy ring out of its container. _Payback for all those years of badly hidden carrots_, _Clark_.

"Don't pass out," he said pleasantly, and tempered the glowing Kryptonite's brilliance by covering most of the stone with a small lead lid. He kept a studious eye on Clark, who swayed on his feet, veins snaking under his skin as if his very blood was writhing to get away from the stone's influence. Lex frowned and closed the lid nearly all the way. Payback was one thing, but he didn't want to actually hurt Clark. Nor have the man's precious blood contaminated by the Kryptonite and made worthless for his children. Besides, he didn't want to appear petty. Only when just a hint of green glowed behind the cover and Clark's veins stopped crawling beneath his skin Lex put the ring on his finger. It looked hideous. It felt powerful.

"Alright?" he asked, and Clark gave him a shaky nod, still looking sick to his stomach. Lex couldn't resist prodding for just a little more information, simply because he could, and because there was little reason for Clark to try and deflect his questions now.

"How DOES it affect you? The Kryptonite I mean?"

Clark's eyes widened. "Kryptonite? How do you know it's called that?"

"Don't underestimate my ability to find out about subjects that interest me. Does it make you sick? Or just weak?"

Clark was beginning to look less and less happy about his decision to come along and let Lex go vampiric on his ass. He watched Lex with growing mistrust.

Lex fiddled with his ring. "You might as well tell me, you know," he said, aiming for playful but only managing bitter. "It isn't as if I'm going to expose you to its influence for a second longer than I need. Or use anything you tell me for anything else but to satisfy my personal curiosity." He picked up the syringe. "It might teach me some humanity, knowing what you're going through on account of my obsessive desire to cure my cancer children. Still, if you don't want to discuss your weaknesses with me, who am I to complain? After all, I wouldn't..."

"Yeah, it makes me sick," Clark interrupted him. "Weak at first, as if my limbs aren't functioning well. Then it makes me nauseous. When there's enough of that, or if it's pure enough," he pointed his chin at the ring, "it really hurts. As if my blood's boiling, as if...Apparently I'm warmer than…than other people. That ring of yours makes me feel as if that heat is turned inward and starts frying my insides. That if you keep that thing in my face long enough, I'm going to throw up everything I've ever eaten, and then my guts, and then my lungs, and then everything that's left of me." He shot Lex a challenging look.

Lex only nodded, keeping his satisfaction hidden. "That's what I thought."

Clark scowled. "That's what you _thought_?"

"Yes. Shall we move on and get this over with? You must be uncomfortable. Why don't you sit down?" He enjoyed the confusion in the younger man's eyes. "It was either that or an allergy from hell," he clarified as he pointed the needle towards Clark's elbow. "Or some meteor freak reaction to green meteor rock. I wonder, Clark, did it ever occur to you to write it off as such? Convince me and everyone else that you were a meteor freak, a harmless little Smallville freak instead of a perfect anthropomorphic alien with loads of secrets?"

He rubbed an alcohol-soaked cotton over Clark's arm, gawking a little at the huge biceps. As a boy Clark's physique had been impressive, but now he was beginning to become downright scary. But his face was like that teenager's again, strangely vulnerable and innocent. "You might have fooled me, then," Lex added, looking away from those clear eyes that saw so much but were so blind at the same time. He clicked one of the plastic vacuum tubes into the hub. "You wouldn't have needed to be so secretive, and you wouldn't have forced me to go to such lengths to try and make you divulge all those secrets to me."

"Nobody forced you to do anything, Lex. Just you yourself."

"Ah," said Lex, and jabbed the hypodermic needle into Clark's vein. He had to push hard to get through the tan skin, and only when he held the ring a little closer he was able to press through. "But we just established that I'm neurotically obsessive, so you can hardly blame me for wanting to find out why you didn't die when I crashed my car into you on that bridge, and later on, why you made a car crash on you when it would otherwise have run me over. Hold still now."

He pressed a button and a dark red liquid that looked like any other blood he'd ever seen (and he'd seen quite a lot of it, recently) squirted into the vial. Clark didn't exactly wince, but he did study the container with trepidation.

"Does it hurt?" Lex asked.

"No. I just…never bleed."

"You did once. When I punched you. And you bled when Morgan Edge hit you. Oh, but he had a Kryptonite rosary. Were you carrying some meteorite with you when I punched your teeth through your lip too?"

"No," Clark said curtly, and the old itch to FIND OUT broke out all over the back of Lex's mind. He forced it back, though and changed the full tube for an empty one. No use getting himself addicted all over again. He had Chloe now. Much better to get addicted to her. He could do without the other Smallville mysteries.

Clark was looking up at him now, smiling a little.

"What?"

"It's really hard for you, isn't it?"

"What is hard for me?"

"Not asking. Not prying. Not KNOWING."

"It's killing me," Lex said, only half-jokingly. He put the second vial in a holder and attached a third one. The blood streamed into it like red milk in a pail. "Really," he muttered, observing it swirl and rise in the plastic container, "you have no idea."

Clark chuckled. "How do you deal with every day's charming and intriguing little secrets, mysteries and riddles?"

"I uncover them," Lex said, not jocularly at all. "I find them, flush them out, observe them, unravel them. But so do you, Clark. Why else would you become a reporter?"

"To be able to find out where people are in trouble and help where I'm needed," Clark said, and Lex laughed at the nobility of that statement compared to the depravity of his own reasons.

"You should have become a policeman, or joined the navy. I'm sure the army would have loved to get you."

"Too many physical tests," Clark replied. His eyes widened as Lex detached the third vial and put in yet another. "Uh…how many of those are you going to take?"

"Why? Are you beginning to feel light-headed?"

"Eh, no, but…"

"Just say 'stop' when you want me to stop," Lex said, as if he were serving coffee. "I have twenty-se—twenty-six children up there, and they all need a full treatment. I'll need quite a lot of blood."

Clark nodded. He really was too gullible for words. "About those children…Or rather about Nelly Potter…" Or maybe he was very, very clever.

"What about her?"

"What are you going to do about them?"

"The Potters? Why do you ask?" Lex tapped the side of the tube, checking its volume.

"Could you please answer a question instead of asking one in return?" Clark snapped, and the needle creaked ominously. He drew in a shocked breath when Lex pushed the ring against his arm, trying to salvage his needle.

"All right, all right! Don't break my syringe!

'The Potters. They still haven't come forward themselves, so I'm going to inflict a bit of a Solomon's ordeal on them."

Clark's eyebrows rose all the way into his hair. "A Solomon's ordeal? Jeez, Lex, what are you gonna do? Threaten to cut that poor girl in two?"

Lex smiled. He replaced the fourth container. "Of course not. But I'm sure you understand that an obsessively neurotic person like me," Clark groaned, making Lex's smile widen, "must have some form of justice. I'm going to hold someone responsible for the suffering these poor kids went through the last few weeks. And of course someone must pay for the death of that girl, Tina." He frowned, growing angry again. Already, the shape of her face was fading away from his mind, and somehow that disturbed him more than anything else.

"The obvious choice for a scapegoat," he continued, carefully watching the vial fill up, "is the person who's directly working for me."

"Doctor Potter."

"Hm-mm."

"You aren't going to kill him, are you?"

The resentment rose up again, and he spat, "What the hell do you think I am, Clark? Of course I'm not going to kill him! Contrary to what you seem to think I don't answer every threat or injustice I meet with gunfire—hell, I don't even CARRY a gun!"

Clark never wavered. "You have killed before."

"May I remind you that the very first time I killed someone it was to save YOUR father, because YOU couldn't do it?" Lex snarled. "Do you think I did that lightly? Or that I liked shooting him down? Do you really think," His fingers clenched around the syringe, "that I take any pleasure at all in killing people?"

"No," said Clark, with such conviction that the rage that made his wounds throb instantly diminished, "but that won't stop you from doing it again."

Lex brusquely removed the fifth tube and slapped in a sixth. "The darkness rising, huh," he grated out. "Better keep well away from it before it infects you."

Clark laughed. "You're such a drama queen."

"_What_?"

"That 'Darkness rising' crap. _Please_." He blinked. "After this one I'd like you to stop, by the way. All I wanted to know was whether you're going to do something horrid to this man."

"I am," Lex said, still angry.

"But it won't kill him?"

"No."

"Is it an illegal horridness?"

"No. Perfectly legit apart from the bit of blackmail I have in mind."

"Good enough for me."

Lex raised an eyebrow. "You're very trusting all of a sudden," he drawled.

"If you say you won't kill him, I'll believe you won't kill him," Clark droned. "After all, you never break your word, do you?"

"No," Lex murmured. He removed the last tube and put it in the holder. "I never break my word." He gave an experimental tug on the hypodermic, then opened the lid of the ring a hair's breadth wider to make sure he wouldn't break the needle and pulled it out, then flicked the ring closed, putting it away. The moment the green shine was gone, so was the needle prick in Clark's elbow. Clark got to his feet, wavered a few seconds. Lex steadied him with a hand on his upper arm.

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah. Bit dizzy."

"Amazing."

Clark shook his head as if to clear it. He did seem a bit pale. "Why amazing?"

"I just took over a liter of blood from you."

"…Yes? Should I be dead?"

"Nah. Just in shock." Lex grinned. He made sure that all the tubes were secure, put the holder back in the box he had kept it in, closed it and took it under his arm. "I lost only a little bit more than I took from you. Well, about twice the amount…but still! The hospital gave me muffins as a bonus for surviving that."

"I could do with a muffin," Clark muttered, and Lex smiled. The last vestiges of his anger bled away in the knowledge of what he was holding under his arm, and just as it had risen, the resentment disappeared without leaving a trace, leaving him feeling generous and content.

"Not the kind the hospital offered you could. Come on. Let me put this somewhere safe and then I'll buy you coffee and pie. You've earned it."

Clark regarded him intently for a few seconds, until Lex's insides began to squirm and he was already formulating the words 'You know what, let's not bother pretending we even like one another' when Clark gave a short nod, smiled and said, "Ok."

Lex was reassured about his fears about latent pedophilia. Clark was all grown up and he was still as fascinating to Lex as he'd been eight years ago. Of course, Chloe was all grown up too, and she was about ten times as fascinating as she'd been eight years ago. No, that particular vice was not to be his, and Lex realized it with relief before dismissing the whole thing entirely.

They were sitting in a corner of the near-deserted cafeteria on the fifth floor of LuthorCare (just how many cafeterias did a building need?), using their coffee as an excuse not to talk.

It turned out Lex didn't buy Clark coffee and a piece of pie, he bought an entire pie and watched the other man inhale it in between sips of coffee. With every slice of pie Clark's cheeks became ruddier, until he was back to bronzed farm boy when both his coffee and the pie were finished.

"Don't get enough of that since you left home?" Lex asked with a smirk.

Clark shrugged. "I was up early. Breakfast was a long time ago. And you did more or less drain me, so I need to replenish my strength."

"Absolutely." He sipped the last cold dredges out of his cup.

"And how are you doing?" Clark asked, and because it was Clark, Lex thought the question was genuine. "Your wounds, I mean?"

"Can't you see?" Lex challenged, going for the carrot despite himself.

Clark shrugged. "I make it a point of privacy not to look through people's clothes."

A quiver of excitement ran through Lex's body, through his hand, and made his cup tinker on its saucer. Openness. Oh god what a rush. "Tell me," he said, only just managing to keep his voice level.

He stared at Lex's shoulder, then his arm, frowned briefly when his eyes traveled over his stomach. "Your left arm seems almost whole again. Shoulder must hurt. I hadn't even noticed that bruise. Did Edge do that as well?"

_Why oh why did I not write __**E.T. phone home**__ on my chest this morning?_ Lex wondered. _Or get my nipples pierced? Anything to shock a reaction out of him._ "No," he said. "I've been fencing. What about hairline fractures?"

Clark stared at him with an unreadable expression on his face, then dropped his eyes and studied the table. Or so it seemed.

_He's looking through the table. He's checking my fricking bones through the TABLE! _ His cup clattered again.

Clark looked up. "They're very small, but still there. You shouldn't walk too…" He trailed off. Lex had hoped the hunger that made his fingers shake wasn't noticeable in his face, but apparently his feigned blankness wasn't convincing Clark. "I won't let you study me, Lex."

"I know."

"I can't afford it."

"I know."

Clark trailed his fork through a smudge of strawberry jelly. "I should go."

Lex nodded. When Clark got up, Lex looked up, because he had one last thing to ask and it was important, crucial to know if he wanted to give this addiction up. "Wait."

"What?"

"Chloe. Does she know? About you? I'm pretty much convinced that she does, but I wasn't a hundred percent sure, otherwise I'd have asked her to persuade you to…" He trailed off as Clark's face flushed, blinked in uncomprehending surprise as the other man plunked down again and stared at him with eyes that glowed almost red.

"Is that why you're seeing Chloe?" Clark hissed. "Because you thought she knew about me?"

For one second Lex gaped at him, then his cup started to rattle again—not with excitement, this time, but with rage. Ok, he hadn't been entirely honest with Clark. He'd done some things Clark disagreed with. But to think that he'd do something so utterly despicable…God, this man would kill him one day.

"No," he grated out, and balled his hands to fists to keep from hurling his cup, and then the saucer, and then Clark's cup and saucer and the pie plate into Clark's face, then pick up the fork and see if Clark's eyeballs were as tough as his skin. "No, Clark. Despite the fact that the entire world revolves around you, I did not start 'seeing Chloe' to question her about you." He was proud that the words came out soft, controlled and malicious, even though he was literally shaking with fury.

"Lex," Clark began, already repentant, but Lex growled, still soft, still smoothly,

"Not everything is about you, Clark. Don't overestimate the impact you made on my life." He pushed his chair back, hoping to heaven that he'd be able to get up and leave with dignity—however, Clark grasped his arm, and even though his grip was careful, it stopped him as effectively as a pair of manacles.

"Wait. Lex…wait. I'm sorry. That was low."

"Don't worry about it," Lex snarled. "You're only being your father's son." He tugged at Clark's hold on his arm, then groaned as his shoulder gave a painful twinge. Clark let him go at once.

"What do you mean by that?"

"It means that this was the last time I've asked you for help. Thank you for services rendered. You said you were leaving?"

Clark shook his head. "Lex, please. Wait. Why do you want to know whether Chloe knows about…about me?"

"Because," Lex said softly, "then I can talk to her about it. Discuss it with her. Because if I don't, it'll be just like all those years ago." He caught Clark's gaze and held it. "It'll drive me crazy, Clark. Seeing things that are impossible, mysteries if you like…I need to prove, if only to myself, that what I'm seeing is real. You are real. What you can do is real. I can keep secrets—hell, I've got plenty of my own, a couple of yours won't make a difference. But if Chloe knows what you are there is someone I can share it with. And that," he smiled cynically, "would be a very welcome change. Can you understand that?"

Clark nodded. Lex thought that he might.

"Does she know? I am almost certain that she does, but…Does she?"

"She knows," said Clark.

"How much?"

"Everything."

TBC.


	22. Chapter 22

Remember how I said this was only going to last a few chapters Remember how I said this was only going to last a few chapters? Well…I kind of got badgered into adding to it, so for the time being the story won't end. Sigh. And here I was writing a happy Hollywood ending… So, ColleenJoy, you don't have to be afraid I'll orphan this story. I love it, and it's more or less finished in my head, so all I have to do is write it down, and I can do that for another fifty pages or so. Don't even need a break, might just slow down a little to keep my eyes from going square. Sherri…Have patience. Lex always keeps his word 

**Jezzworth, thanks for the reviews! Glad to be of service! Anyway, here we go. Lex being creepy ahead.**

Twenty-two: In which Chloe receives mail

"Everything," Lex repeated softly. He sank back in his chair. "Everything? That you're an alien, that you're indestructible, that your blood heals…everything?"

"Everything she needs to know," Clark rephrased. He had his eyes cast down and hidden by his lashes, gazing at the table, or maybe through it, or maybe even through the floor. "But most of it…yeah, she knows."

"Did you tell her you were going to donate your blood?"

"No."

"Why not?" He really wondered.

Clark shrugged. "I haven't seen her since I brought Amy back. And it…" he looked up, and Lex felt himself falling again, head over heels in that pit of addiction, "I figured it was something between the two of us, not her. I didn't tell Lana either."

"Does Lana know?" Lex knew that Lana did NOT know. Somehow, Clark had become so damned good at lying that he managed to have a relationship with a woman without telling her a single thing about himself.

"No. No, she doesn't."

Good for him. Lex knew from experience that the moment you told the one you loved about your deepest secrets or unhealthy obsessions they almost tripped over their feet to get away from you. Still, he was awed. Lex had never managed to keep his mouth shut when the love-of-his-life of the moment told him it was either show and tell or her packing her bags and moving out.

He hoped to god Chloe wouldn't do that. He made a mental note to go over all his illegal projects and make sure that there was no way any intrepid reporter could stumble over them.

But she knew about Clark.

"Did you ever…practice with her?" he asked. Clark looked at him as if he'd grown a second head.

"With Lana? Practice? Lex, what the hell…"

"No, not Lana, with Chloe! Did you ever try to find out just how strong you are? Or how fast?"

"No," Clark said, closing off again. "And knock it off. I told you I won't let you pry into my life anymore—and one other thing. Chloe knows. Yes. But I'm telling you straight away, if you think you can use her to expand your Clark Kent encyclopedia, you're sadly mistaken. She doesn't…"

"It's just an added bonus, Clark," Lex interrupted him with a sigh. There really was no end to the suspicions of this man. What on earth had Lex ever done to him that warranted this hostile a response? So Lex had set him up, lied to him and obsessed over him. He'd never tried to use any of his friends to get to him. That wasn't his style. He'd leave that to his father. "Just an added bonus. You can curb your fraternal worry. She's more than interesting enough without knowing a thing about your heritage." He checked his watch. "I should get going, though. Need to talk to Dr. Potter before he leaves for his lunch break."

"Right."

They both got up, stared at one another. Finally, Clark held out his hand. "Good luck, Lex. With your kids, I mean."

Lex gripped Clark's hand in return, noting, almost absentmindedly, that after 20 years of farm work and stopping trains, the other man had less calluses on his palm and fingers than Lex, whose cells regenerated so fast blisters healed within ten hours.

"Thanks. And thanks, too, for this. It can't have been easy for you putting yourself back under my microscope."

"All for a good cause," Clark said airily, with a slightly alarmed glint in his eyes. Lex smiled, then squeezed Clark's hand (warm, strong, but not giving) and said, "I swore to you I'd give back whatever is left over. If there is anything left, you'll get it back. Don't worry." He let the smile slip away. "I won't use those children to advance my knowledge of you."

Clark nodded. "I know."

"You just doubt my intentions."

"Not your intentions, Lex. I know your intentions are usually good. You just get…sidetracked, once in a while." He grinned, released Lex's hand and put his own hands in his pockets. "I guess I'll just have to watch the news to see if you're right about my blood."

"The news, the papers. I might give you the scoop."

"That's generous of you."

They grinned, and for a moment, their enmity had completely vanished. Then Lex remembered that he was facing an alien, and his grin faded. "You'd better go now." _While you still can. While I can still let you go without breaking this truce._

"Yeah. I'll be seeing you, Lex."

Lex inclined his head, and as Clark sauntered out of the cafeteria Lex forced himself not to stare at his retreating back yet turn around, take another exit and make his way over to the nearest reception point.

He found it in the hallway adjacent to the elevator hall. A young man with a poorly chosen tie sat doodling on his notepad behind the desk; when Lex casually rested his elbows (and then hissed and removed his right elbow) on the counter he sat up with a jolt, hid the doodle beneath his hand and asked how he could help.

Lex smiled lazily, and even though he couldn't see even beyond that horrible tie he was quite certain that the man's heartbeat was quite fast and speeding up. "Do I have a private office somewhere in this building?" He undoubtedly had. He had offices everywhere. Hadn't seen the inside of at least half of them.

"Yes sir," the man said with a faintly surprised look. He checked a list pinned to the wall next to him. "Fifteenth floor, first door to the right, room 1502." 

"Thank you. Could you tell Doctor Potter that I'd like to see him?"

"Yes, Mister Luthor."

While the man snatched up the phone, Lex made his way back to the elevator, frowning slightly. He didn't think he'd ever get used to being called 'Mister Luthor', even though he'd been precisely that ever since he entered the corporate shark pond where he'd always performed so excellently. Still, 'Mister Luthor', to his mind, was, and always would be, his father.

To those who were not his immediate family, Lex had first been Alexander Luthor before becoming Lex, and he'd had to go to relatively great deals of trouble to make sure that the last, abbreviated name stuck. At Excelsior, that was. He smiled thinking back on that.

Excelsior, and Lex's battle to become something different than just a bald Luthor. 

At that time he'd been in the middle of his transformation from little Alexander to smooth Lex, fifteen years old, teenage-skinny after a recent growth spurt and only just coming to enjoy his new fuck-you-all mentality. He'd discovered that his peers were quite easy to cow and impress with the right words, the right attitude and the right information ("Yes, my mom is dead. Yes, cancer. Contrary to what you seem to be thinking I don't cry for her at night—like you should do. Why? Well, at least _my_ mom didn't sleep around with other men, like yours does. You don't believe me? Do you want to see pictures?")

It cost him many a bloody nose, but it gained him a grudging respect from those who were not his friends but had no quarrel with him, and open admiration from those who realized what he was doing. Because Lex had been forging a kingdom. Before, he'd been content to be left alone, but no longer. The pathetic, weak twelve-year-old boy-chrysalis that had cried at the absence of any friends at his birthday party, and who whispered his fears and dreams into a little lead box when no one was watching had finally split open and released a self-confident young man who relished in creating enough space so he could spread his ambitious wings. He climbed in the ranks of the school with a ruthless single-mindedness that frightened some of his fellow students and delighted the few he gathered around him—not friends, exactly, but people who'd come to understand who he was, what he was doing, and how far he'd go to get what he wanted.

And he'd go further than anyone ever had before. Alexander disappeared. Lex returned in his place. And Lex was planning to stay. One morning he filled an envelop with photographs, put on his most blank expression, and walked into the dean's office.

"Alexander," the dean acknowledged his presence without enthusiasm. Lex and the teachers didn't exactly see eye to eye. Lex did not foresee any improvement of the situation in the near future.

"I'd prefer it if you called me Lex, sir," he said, standing at ease in front of the man's desk, the brown envelop held casually behind his back. "In class as well as privately."

The dean looked up from his paperwork. "Mister Luthor…What on earth has gotten in to you these last few months? The reports I'm getting…It's almost as if you're trying to get yourself expelled!"

"I'd really rather have you calling me Lex," Lex said coolly. "As for what I'm doing, well, you should be pleased, sir. I've finally grasped the spirit of Excelsior, and I'm putting it to use. From Riches comes Power? Study Brings Progress? Discipline Rules, Knowledge Rules Supreme? They're such worthy sayings."

"Mister Luthor…"

"Lex."

"Mister _Luthor_," the dean said with emphasis, "I'm sure you are aware of the fact that when we address our pupils, we do so either by their last name, or their full first name. You can keep your little nickname amongst friends, but…"

"But I insist," Lex interrupted him. The dean's brows lowered menacingly. Lex indulged in a tiny smirk. "Sir."

"_Mister_ Luthor! I suggest you…" Lex tossed the envelop on the man's desk. A flutter of nervousness cramped his stomach, but outwardly, he was a study of calm. "What is this?"

"It's the reason why you should make an exception for me," Lex said. He watched as the dean slowly opened the envelop, shook out the pictures onto his desk, and blanched. Incredulity seeped out of every pore as he sought the eyes of his young pupil. "How…how did you get…these?"

"Hidden camera," Lex said smugly. "In the science cabinet." He fell silent and let the dean sweat for a while, then changed his stance and said, "Professor, I have no desire whatsoever to compromise your career." He had practiced these words and their inflection several times, and was satisfied that they came out exactly the way he wanted them to. "I really couldn't care less about your little acts of…indiscretion…as long as it isn't with me or any of my friends. Or anyone who seeks my protection. I'll let you know when someone you've offered your affections has decided to come to me because he no longer wishes to receive them. You will leave those boys alone. Or I'll publish these." He jerked his chin to the pictures littered over the desk.

"This is blackmail," the dean whispered.

"So is fucking little boys and telling them that if they ever talk about it you'll fail them," Lex said coldly. "And I am not talking about failing or passing, I can do that on my own; I am talking about being called Lex in class, instead of Mister Luthor."

"You little bald-headed hell spawn…"

Lex raised his finger. "No no no: _Lex_. And I'd be very much obliged if you'd tell the other teachers to call me Lex as well."

"But why…Why is that so important to you?"

"You're the professor, you figure it out."

The dean stared up at him, almost frothing at the mouth. "Your father will hear of this!"

Lex chuckled. "Will he, now?" he dropped his gaze to the pictures, then drew it up, slowly, until he met the dean's eyes head on. "Do you think my father has any love for pedophiles, even if they do have several professorates and run the classiest boarding school in America? Please. Believe me, the easiest way out of this is if you'd just call me Lex."

He stood there for some time, refusing to budge under the dean's furious glare…until it finally broke, and the professor cast his eyes down. "Fine. You win…for now. But I'm warning you Lu—Lex, I won't take this lying down. You will regret this."

_No,_ Lex remembered thinking at the time, _you take them standing up. _"Sir, with all due respect, you can't touch me. Or do you think that these pictures will ever become less incriminating? If so, I suggest you study them for a while. I don't need them back; I have copies." He smiled, bright and sharp as a knife. "Enjoy your day, sir. It was good to speak to you."

And he left. Back, in his room, he had a momentary breakdown, couldn't breathe and thought his heart would pound itself out of his body…But it didn't last long, and shortly afterwards all he could feel was exhilaration.

"So it worked?" his partner in crime, a small, harmless-looking boy one year younger whose skills with a camera were unmatched asked from where he sat perched on the window sill of Lex's shared room.

Lex shot him a wild grin. "Yes," he sighed, mopping his forehead with his sleeve. "God, yes, Dave, it worked all right. At least, I think so. I guess we'll find out by tomorrow. If they start calling me Lex…"

"I still don't understand why we don't use these pictures to out him," Davey said. "This way he'll just keep doing it."

"No, he won't," said Lex. "He won't take the risk. And getting him replaced…now that wouldn't serve my purposes at all, would it? It's good to have someone of authority by the balls. After all, let's not forget the motto of our beloved school: _Amat victoria curam_. No one can say I haven't taken any pains."

"Here's your camera back," Davey said, handing it over regretfully. In his small, bony hands the innocent device was like a weapon, the pictures he shot as lethal as bullets. Davey had used the camera to shoot the dean and left him in as much agony as the man would have been with a bullet in the gut. If it had been up to him, Davey'd have shot to kill. Lex was the only one keeping him back from becoming a social and professional murderer. Him being the one to provide both the training and the weapon, Lex was the only one who could.

Well aware of this fact, Lex accepted the camera with the same respect as he would a Walter PPK, held it tenderly for a moment before tucking it away in a drawer under his bed. "I'll get you a new one," he promised. "A better one. Just make sure you don't use it anywhere near the dean, or he might suspect you."

No one had ever suspected Dave Finch of taking such dreadful pictures while jammed in the science cabinet. Purpose fulfilled, Davey was happy to become one of Lex's acquaintances, profiting from what they called their friendship while Lex profited from whatever Davey had to offer—which, after his big blackmail action, wasn't much more than the occasional awe-inspiring photograph of a bird of prey, a bit of gossip, or a few hours of enjoyable conversation.

Of course Lex had accidentally slipped a few of those pictures to the press the moment his position as Excelsior's shadow-emperor was secured. He might not be above keeping another person's heinous crimes a secret to become better from it, but he was not about to let a pedophile abuse more of his fellow pupils, or let him walk free after he'd served his use. After twenty-two years of successfully running a distinguished boy school and god knows how many penetrations in the science class room, the dean was removed from his office and taken away, leaving his successor unprepared for the Lexian empire the man unknowingly stumbled into.

Davey Finch had later become a war correspondent, not a photographer, although  
he had started out as one, and had disappeared in Afghanistan three years ago. Not that Lex had kept in touch; the boy had been useful, and his company pleasant, his awe for Lex inspiring, but after Excelsior there was no common ground for them and they'd parted as school mates, nothing more. Still, he had noticed his name in the papers, and encouraged certain people to search for him, but to no avail.

Davey, the boy who fitted into a science cabinet, was gone, most likely killed or maybe just missing, and the only times Lex remembered he had once existed were either when he reminisced about his school days, or when he happened to wander into the study of his metropolis apartment and saw the framed picture of a hawk plummeting down to catch a rodent.

The elevator pinged and he got out, ambled to his office, unlocked it with his fingerprint and studied it with contentment. He didn't think he'd ever been here before, although all offices started to look the same if you had more than two. It had a big, oaken desk with a flat screen for his computer, one of those chairs on wheels that enabled one to move through the entire room with only one push of the arm, two black leather chairs with slightly lower seats than the desk chair to inspire a maximum of servitude from the people seated upon them, a side table, a few lamps and the obligatory piece of greenery, in this case a tiny orange tree. Lex turned on the computer, then tapped one of the grape-sized oranges. They were real. Huh.

He trailed his fingers over the gleaming, empty desk, sat down in his chair and breathed a quiet sigh of relief. His meeting with Clark was over, and while it had threatened to become disastrous several times, the outcome on the whole was positive.

The children would be cured, he didn't doubt that.

Lex was on the mend, and now he could sit, both of which were good things.

Chloe still didn't have a clue about LuthorCorp's real role in this whole drama, nor did she show any inclination to start digging for more meticulously buried filth—one of the few positive results of almost dying in her arms, Lex gathered. It gave him a certain leniency. Now he only needed to serve out justice to Potter (to which end he typed in his password and pulled up the man's file, and another file from the database) and have Edge hunted down and executed and his day would be perfect.

Unfortunately, Edge was still on the loose, and neither Lionel's bloodhounds nor any police investigation had found as much as a footprint.

_So I'll be afraid for a bit longer, until it wears off._ He sighed. He'd thought he'd be done with body guards after his failed run for Senator.

The elevator pinged and he got out, ambled to his office, unlocked it  
with his fingerprint and studied it with contentment. He didn't think  
he'd ever been here before, although all offices started to look the  
same if you had more than two. It had a big, oaken desk, one of those  
chairs on wheels that enabled one to move through the entire room with  
only one push of the arm, two black leather chairs with slightly lower  
seats than the desk chair to inspire a maximum of servitude from the  
people seated upon them, a side table, a few lamps and the obligatory  
piece of greenery, in this case a tiny orange tree. Lex tapped one of  
the grape-sized oranges. They were real. Huh.

He trailed his fingers over the gleaming, empty desk, sat down in his  
chair and breathed a quiet sigh of relief. His meeting with Clark was  
over. The children would be cured, he didn't doubt that. Lex was on  
the mend, and now he could sit, both of which were good things. Chloe  
still didn't have a clue about LuthorCorp's real role in this whole  
drama, nor did she show any inclination to start digging for more  
meticulously buried filth--one of the few positive results of almost  
dying in her arms, Lex gathered. It gave him a certain leniency. Now  
he only needed to serve out justice to Potter and have Edge hunted  
down and executed and his day would be perfect.

Unfortunately, Edge was still on the loose, and neither Lionel's  
bloodhounds nor any police investigation had found as much as a  
footprint.

So I'll be afraid for a bit longer, until it wears off. He sighed.  
He'd thought he'd be done with body guards after his failed run for  
Senator. 

A short knock on the door pulled him out of his thoughts and he let his face melt into his dealing-with-underlings expression: eyes half-lidded, mouth in a faint, superior curl, eyebrows arched just that little bit to convey the perfect amount of authority.

"Enter," said Lex.

A nondescript man with graying black hair and spectacles entered the room, face blank but posture stiff. His fingers fidgeted with something he had in his pocket; a pen, or a key, or something else very small. Dr. Potter was trying very hard not to look guilty or conspicuous, and almost succeeding but for those twitching fingers.

Lex, sensing weakness, permitted himself a minute smile. "Dr. Potter. Please have a seat."

"Mister Luthor." He sat down, touching the chair only with his buttocks, back tensed and straight. Oh yes, the good Dr. Potter was very much aware that he wasn't here to get a cookie for his excellent research—although it was very excellent indeed.

"How are you, Doctor?" Lex asked pleasantly.

"Me? I'm very fine, Mister Luthor. Very fine indeed."

"I'm glad to hear that. With most of the staff still laid out with the flu it's good to see that some people have managed to stay on their feet."

Confusion radiated from behind Dr. Potter's spectacles. "Uh, yeah," he said. "I guess I have a high constitution."

"That's good," Lex said. "Very good. A high constitution will serve you well in Africa."

"A-Africa?"

Lex quick-checked Valerie Decan's personal file. "Yes," he said calmly. "Africa. Lesotho. Igawi, Lesotho, to be precise. I'm reposting you," he said, looking up and meeting the man's slowly comprehending eyes, "to Africa. They have great need of good scientists to help develop cheap cures for all those horrible diseases that plague the country. There's a small orphanage over there that would greatly benefit of your presence."

"B-but…" Potter stuttered. "No! My work is here! It isn't finished yet!"

"Yes," Lex said slowly, "I'm afraid it is."

"I can't go to Africa! My children…"

"Surely you wouldn't expose your wife and children to that unhealthy climate? Although, apparently the countryside is quite beautiful."

Potter shot to his feet. "Mister Luthor, you cannot send me to Africa against my will. Now, I don't know why you…"

"Sit down, Dr. Potter," Lex said. "I won't send you to Africa." Potter sat back down. His back still didn't touch the chair. "Instead, I'll have your niece picked up and studied at the ARMS Ops. department. An ability like hers might give us that breakthrough we've been hoping for in the development of those camouflage suits." Lex regarded the other man with a benevolent expression. Potter's face had drained of color. "Of course," Lex added, "We'll have to unblock her again, first. With Amy Murray safely back in our midst, however, that shouldn't pose any trouble. Don't you think so, Dr. Potter?"

Potter's mouth opened and closed a few times, without any sound coming out. That was ok, Lex had plenty to say.

"I know you and your brother had Amy kidnapped by Nelly Potter, your brother's daughter. I also know why. I understand. That is to say, I understand why you'd think Amy Murray would be the only solution to your niece's…condition. However, what I do not understand is that you did not bring in your niece to have her examined here. You must know I have lived in Smallville myself. Freaks like your daughter are nothing new to me; I am not unsympathetic towards those mutated by the meteors. You and your brother could have been assured of my discretion and cooperation if you were to request Amy's cooperation."

Potter muttered something.

"What's that, Dr. Potter?"

"Mark…my brother didn't want to expose her to more scientists. Or to the press. She's been through so much already."

"He was, however, willing to bring her all the way here and encourage her to break and enter and kidnap a dangerously ill girl? Your brother's tender nature fills me with compassion."

The man looked up with a snap, eyes smoldering. "You don't know what it was like to watch her melt like that! How it terrified her—and us!"

"You're right," Lex agreed. "I don't. Neither do I care. After Amy blocked and subsequently saved your niece, why didn't you take her back? You must have known her actions had severely weakened some of the other children."

"I didn't know that…"

Lex slammed his fist on the table, making sure it was his left, not his right. It still hurt. "Don't lie to me." Potter fell silent, looked away. "You knew. You're right about that constitution of yours, it's impressive to say the least. You haven't been sick all year. You were here all the time. Moreover, you worked on the new cure that was to be distributed amongst the children Amy Murray blocked. Ergo, you did know her influence had rendered the original treatment worthless." He put on his father's face. "By keeping Amy Murray hidden at your brother's house in Smallville, and by not taking her back or forcing your brother to bring her back, you are responsible for the death of Tina Maxwell. I could have you arrested, and that would mean the end of your career. However, since that would not do anyone any good and I'd rather make use of your talent I've decided to give you the choice I've hinted at before. Either accept a position as a leading scientist in Igawi, nobly battling AIDS, cholera and death during a five-year project, or tell your brother to deliver Nelly on the second of January."

"You can't do this."

"Kidnapping." Lex listed. "Theft of medication. Manslaughter—because that's what it comes down to, or perhaps I should call it child-slaughter? Harmful conduct unbecoming of the Hippocratic oath. I assure you, Dr. Potter, that I can." Another dean, another picture, similar situation. Only now his empire was already in full bloom, and Potter was just another pawn.

"I'll resign."

"I won't accept it." He waited. Dr. Potter sagged in his chair, sweating. "I'd make sure she'd be treated with the utmost respect," Lex said kindly. "Your niece, Nelly. Of course she'd be all alone, and some people might find all those tests and machines scary, but I'm sure she and your brother would understand if you'd tell them you'd rather let her pay for your cowardice than face five years in Africa."

"I," Potter whispered. "I'll need some time…to think it over. To explain…"

"To discuss this all with your family," Lex said. "I understand. I'm sure that together, you'll be able to come to a satisfying conclusion. Let me know by the second of January, so that I know whether to arrange a plane ticket or a room at ARMS Ops."

The look Potter shot him made Lex very glad that looks still couldn't kill. He reflected the man's expression like a mirror, and as always, had the pleasure to see the fury shrivel up and make way to fear.

"That will be all, Dr. Potter. Thanks for stopping by."

Potter left. His right pocket was stained with blue. He must have broken his pen when Lex informed him of his options.

"Always use Bic pens," Lex murmured under his breath, and turned off his computer. "Unless you're a reporter at a conference."

Chloe wondered if her inability to focus on anything but her steaming cup of coffee meant she was socially challenged. Coffee, fresh, decorated Starbucks coffee impaired her judgment like liquor impaired another person's motor functions. She was halfway through her beaker before it occurred to her that Clark, her benefactor, had still said nothing apart from 'Here, I thought you could probably use this,', and he'd been here, hovering in silence, for almost ten minutes now. That probably meant he needed to talk to her. Other people, when they needed to let off some steam, came to her and started with "Good Lord, Sullivan, you need to listen to this!" or something similar. Clark usually oozed silence until someone prodded him into speech.

She looked up from the swirl of caramel she'd been trying to lick from the rim of her cup. "Wow. You are so chatty, Clark, you're making my ears ring. What's up?" She hoped it wasn't about sex with Lana again. According to Lana they were doing fine now, and even though she was his trusted side-kick, she really could do without Clark angsting about crushing his girlfriend in the sack.

Clark noisily sucked frappuccino through his straw—a promising sign. If it was about sex, he'd bite the straw, not suck it. "I just had a chat with Lex." he finally said.

Praise and salutations, her boys were talking! "A chat! How nice! Did you two make up?"

Clark half-smiled around his straw. "I'm not sure. I don't think so. Maybe."

"Well that sounds promising..."

"I'd forgotten how frustrating it is to talk to Lex."

"Frustrating?" She could think of a lot of ways to describe conversations with Lex, but frustrating wasn't how she'd put it. "What do you mean?"

Clark frowned, gesturing with his carton cup. "I don't know! It's just...he turns everything around—every single thing you say he twists and turns until you think you've said something completely different than what you've actually said!"

"Sounds complicated. Don't drip in my inbox, if you please."

"Sorry."

"So what did he twist out of context? Or is it something personal? What made you wave the peace flag anyway? Or was it...whatever's the opposite of a white flag?"

Clark ignored her. His fingers tightened around his poor cup, causing more chilled coffee to drip in Chloe's inbox. She cast a fleeting glance at the document lying on top, then dismissed it as not being worth scolding Clark. It was only a cheapo Daily Planet New Year's wish, printed out on economical thin paper with their own base floor Xerox. Clark could drip his coffee all over it for all she cared.

"I saw him yesterday," he started, slowly gaining momentum as he spoke, a bit like a locomotive coming up to steam. "Just before he left the hospital. I didn't really plan on visiting him, I just…you know, I wanted to know whether he was alright. And he was. But wasn't." He sighed. "We had a bit of a fight. Turned out he has a different view of what happened over the years, on who betrayed whom. It was enlightening."

For an enlightened man, Clark sure sounded somber. Chloe made an encouraging sound, not sure what exactly she was expected to say. Nothing, it seemed.

"Lex accused me of walking out on him after that whole Morgan Edge business. He blames me directly for what happened at Belle Reve. Said I should have busted him out, or at least helped him."

Chloe raised her eyebrows. "Well, you did leave him there to rot."

Clark's eyes widened in shock. "But I was…How could I…"

"Relax. I don't know what you should've done. I'm not accusing you. For all we knew Lex really had blown a fuse and was just bumping around in the dark. I wouldn't know how you could have gotten him out. We all thought he'd be safer there, too. From Lionel. I'm just trying to see if from Lex's point of view. I thought he couldn't remember."

Clark looked away. "He wasn't crazy," he murmured.

"Sorry?"

"I know he wasn't crazy. They were drugging him, Edge and Lionel. And I knew he wasn't safe there, either. He was right. I left him there because I didn't know what to do. Because that day he saw what I was, and when he looked at me, just after Edge's car…He scared me. He was all fucked up on hallucinogens, and he must have been just as scared and shocked as me, but when he looked at me like that…" He frowned. "He said, 'You're not even human', and you know, when he said that it was as if I really wasn't human, as if I wasn't even alive, never been his friend, never even been a person. He'd already put me in a test-tube and labeled me like some kind of lab-rat. And I freaked out. He scared me so, so much right then, and I freaked out and left him there. And when Lionel erased his mind," He threw his cup in Chloe's dustbin with a scowl of disgust, "all I felt was relief, because he'd forgotten everything, and he'd never look at me like that again."

Chloe said nothing, kept her face blank. Clark didn't need a referee, he needed a listener. By the looks of it, he'd already judged himself. Or maybe Lex had.

"I thought," Clark said softly, "that he'd forgotten everything. He got some things back, later, when that doctor experimented on him, but he never mentioned that incident again, so I thought he didn't know, hadn't remembered…But he had. He'd remembered, Chloe. And he KNOWS. He knows what I am."

Instinctively, Chloe looked around, checking for potential spies and eavesdroppers—but the room was all but empty (because most sensible people made sure they were off between Christmas and New Year), and the few other inhabitants of the room were feverishly at work. Still, she pulled him closer and whispered shrilly, "He _knows_??"

"Oh yes."

"Are you sure?"

"Oh yes."

"How much?"

"Everything. More than you, even."

"More than me? What's he know that I don't know?" Despite herself, she couldn't help being piqued. How could Lex possibly know more about Clark than she did?

"He knew my blood heals. It's a long story, he just…found out one day."

"Your blood heals? Wow. You never told me that. How's that work? Do you need to drink it, or sprinkle it, or…"

A wry smile crinkled Clark's mouth. "Focus, Chloe."

"Right. Sorry. Lex knew your blood heals."

"Yeah. Aaaaand…He kind of…persuaded me to give it to him."

Chloe gripped the edge of her desk for balance. Clark 'I will never be your guinea pig!' Kent had given his blood to a 'He looked at me as if I were something in a test-tube' Luthor. She loved both guys with all her heart, but some things were REALLY better left separated. "Say what?"

Clark looked very much unhappy. "Yeah."

"You gave him your blood?"

"Yeah. But it's…"

"Clark, do you realize that you've just given a hard-core junkie an overdose of the finest stuff?"

"It's for his cancer kids," Clark said quietly, and that shut her up pretty much. "He swore to me he wouldn't touch it himself; it's just to cure those children. If there's anything left, he'll give it back to me. He promised me he wouldn't try to study me. And I believe him. I want to believe him," he added, softer.

"Oh Christ, Clark…"

"The way he put it, I couldn't really refuse."

"No," she said, understanding completely. "No, I guess you couldn't." Lex had a way to make people do exactly what he wanted while simultaneously making them feel that they had volunteered. Or were being unfair if they didn't do what he asked them to. She could just imagine the kind of conversation they must have had. She blew out a long breath. "So what now?"

"Now I trust him."

"That easily?"

Clark snorted. "Nothing easy about it, but yeah, that easily. He gave me his word and I know he'd never break that. Besides," he smiled faintly, "he has you now, to keep him clean."

"Yeah, well, I'm not an alien."

"He more or less said that didn't matter."

"You two talked about me?" Curiosity warred with disapproval. Curiosity won. "What about?"

"Oh…about him using you to get to know more about me," Clark sing-songed guiltily.

She gawked. "You're kidding me. Please don't tell me you accused him of that."

"Did, I'm afraid."

"Clark! You asshole!" One of her colleagues cast her a long-suffering glance from the other end of the room, and she waved and lowered her voice to a poisonous hiss. "It isn't anything like that! I'm aware I'm not a gorgeous brunette with legs to her armpits but I'd like to think that Lex likes me for me, and not for you! Don't you think I'd have NOTICED it if he was only interested in me because of you? I mean, really, we DO have other things to talk about but you, you know!" Or not talk. Plenty to do without even remembering certain farm boys existed. "As a matter of fact, we haven't talked about you, like, ever!" Apart from that one time yesterday, when he mentioned Clark never having any bruises.

Hmm, interesting. That must have been that evening right after their little chat. Although righteous, her anger faded, both because of Clark's repentant puppy eyes and her own conviction that no matter how manipulative her beloved billionaire boyfriend (was he that? Or should she call him lover? She disliked the word 'lover'. It was a very Arthurian, or rather Lancelotian word, and in her opinion both Arthur and Lancelot, and Guinevere as well, were a bunch of sexually frustrated nitwits) was, he associated and slept with her (when able) because he liked her character, thought her body arousing, and trusted her enough to close his eyes when she was lying next to him; not because he suspected she knew Clark Kent wasn't exactly from Kansas.

"So what did Lex say?" she wanted to know.

"He made it clear that I was mistaken about his reasons to um, hang out with you."

She settled back in smug contentment. "See?"

"I'm really sorry I was worried about you," Clark said, making an attempt at sarcasm. "After all, with such a stable, innocent, controlled man like Lex, who has such a loving family and no history of morally questionable conduct at all, what could go wrong?"

"He could dump me," Chloe replied. She moved her mouse to wake up her monitor. "Wouldn't be the first time a man dumped me before even saying he loved me. Or I could dump him. Wouldn't be the first time either."

Clark sighed. "Well, anyway, now you know. Oh. And the reason I came here…He knows you know, too. So if he WOULD ask, you know, when you've worn each other out and exhausted all other topics, it's ok to discuss it with him, if you feel like it."

Somehow, hearing that Lex knew that she knew about Clark came as a bigger shock than hearing that Lex knew about Clark. "I can talk about it? With Lex?" He'd always been the one person that was never to know. Some strange kind of tension stirred in her stomach. _Won't he be mad? He never asked me directly if I knew anything…but still…Urrgh. Claaark! You must be the only person who makes absolving someone of their vow of silence as difficult as asking for it!_

She only smiled, though, and chirped, "Ok!" with a cheerfulness she didn't feel. Part of her wanted to phone Lex right now and find out if he didn't mind the fact that she'd kept silent. Another part wanted to move to the nearest bomb shelter and wait for the Luthor to explode.

Nonsense, of course. Lex was over Clark.

_Yeah, and Lois will stop smoking on the first of January._

"Look," said Clark, still hovering. "I'm sorry to spring it on you like this, and I'm sure it's nothing worth worrying over. I just thought you should know, just in case."

"That's cool, Clark. No problem." Her mailbox logo blinked, attending her to new mail. "I'd better get back to work. Some people actually need time to type their articles, you know."

He smiled, apologetic because he knew damn well she was as thrilled with the situation as he was—not at all—rubbed her shoulder and left. It was rare, she thought, to be able to hear his footsteps all the way to the door.

She clicked on her email program without expecting to find anything even remotely interesting after her last conversation, but as it turned out, surprises did hide around every corner.

Because the freshly arrived email was from Mr. Smith.

It took her a while before she could bring herself to click on it. When she did and the message opened in a new screen, the letters danced in front of her eyes, and she had to blink before she could read it.

_Miss Sullivan,_ it started, as it always had started before.

_First, I would like to apologize to you for the rough treatment you were forced to undergo. Please believe me when I tell you that you were never to come to any harm. _

_I assume you had your purse returned to you undamaged?_

_Somehow, I am convinced that at this point, you wish nothing to do with me or with those cases I brought under your attention. It is too early yet. However, my battle against LuthorCorp and Lex Luthor himself is, apparently, not yet over. Even if he is dead, his corporation still stands, and his projects continue unhindered. _

_When you have recovered from the shock I put you through, you might wish to continue your search for the truth. When that time comes, know that I still have many, many reports in my possession that may bring LuthorCorp down._

_I will send you one in the near future._

_For now, I wish you all the best._

_Regards,_

_Martin Edge._

Chloe drew in a ragged breath. "You fucking brazen son of a bitch…" He'd written to her. He'd MAILED her, in plain sight of everything, signing with his own bloody name! She picked up the phone and called Chris Barkley, their unofficial digital expert. He'd once hacked her into Homicide; the man could surely tell her when and from where the email had been sent.

"Barkley."

"Hey Chris. It's Chloe." One of the good things about computer nerds was that they didn't have a private life and therefore never seemed to need a holiday. Chris was here, just like her. "Could you come up? I need you to have a look at an email I just received."

Chris said he'd be up as soon as he completed his next level, whatever that meant, and while she waited Chloe copied the message, printed it out and studied it intently.

_First, I would like to apologize to you for the rough treatment you were forced to undergo. Please believe me when I tell you that you were never to come to any harm. _

Uhuh.

_I assume you had your purse returned to you undamaged?_

What, exactly, had he done with her purse? The police had studied it, she had studied it, Clark had studied it. There was nothing inside of it that didn't belong to her. Why, then, did he mention him sending the bag back to her? To assure her he really hadn't wanted to hurt her? Or did it have something to do with his plans to involve her again? The thought made her shiver. "No way. No fucking way I'm ever going to help you again."

_However, my battle against LuthorCorp and Lex Luthor himself is, apparently, not yet over. Even if he is dead, his corporation still stands, and his projects continue unhindered. _

She read that sentence several times, and every time she could come to only one conclusion: Edge didn't know that Lex had survived. It was phrased in such a way that the writer wasn't completely certain, but it all hinted at a firm belief that Lex was dead. And that meant… "That this message was either written before the news of Lex's survival was on TV, or that he really doesn't know. But how can he not know? If he can send emails he must have access to the internet, and if he can surf the net, he can see that Lex isn't dead." She'd have to ask Chris. He might be able to tell her if it was possible to send emails with a delay.

_When that time comes, know that I still have many, many reports in my possession that may bring LuthorCorp down. I will send you one in the near future._

"Like hell you will, asshole," she muttered. "I'll see you in prison first, you filthy kidnapping son of a whore."

"Language, language," a low twang of a voice drawled. "Or if you have to insult someone's ancestry, do it in style. Hijo de Puta sounds so much better than son of a whore, doncha think?"

"My Spanish is limited," Chloe returned, leaving her chair and indicating Chris should sit down. "I'm more inventive in English. It's this mail, Chris. I need to know when it was sent, by who, where, by which provider, etcetera, etcetera, the whole shebang."

"Mister Smith?" Chris wondered. "As in THE Mister Smith? Who's actually Mister Jones, and all the other guys that was hanging out the Luthors' industrial dirty laundry?"

"Yeah, that Smith."

He shot her a sideward glance, eyes dark in a who-needs-sunshine? pale face. "The guy who kidnapped you and Lex Luthor and used him for target practice?"

"Yeah, that's the guy." She desperately hoped he wouldn't say 'My hero'. At the moment her patience with people abusing Lex was rather low. Thankfully, Chris wasn't entirely devoid of insight into people's character—which was why he was working here and not playing World of Warcraft at his mother's. He simply nodded, said, "Well, gotta catch them all, then, eh?" grinned at his obscure reference and called up the root source of her mail.

"What I want to know," Chloe said, "is whether this email was somehow sent with a delay. Is that possible at all?"

"Sure," Chris said, typing. He was quite heavy-set, but his fingers were long and dexterous. "Most mail servers have an option where you can specify on which date you want to have it sent. Even Outlook has it," endless contempt dripped from his tongue. Chloe noticed he was wearing a T-shirt with a penguin on it. "Or if you're not connected to the net, it just remains in your outbox until you reconnect. And otherwise you can set up some kind of bot to send it for you, if you send it from an alien server. Buuttt…." He swirled towards her, "as you can see, he wrote this message six days ago. This is the date of composition." He tapped a date on screen. "So does that tell you anything useful?"

"Maybe." She gnawed on her pen. "It tells me something at least. Can you find out more? Where it's been sent from?"

He smacked his lower lip, drawing it out with square teeth. "Maybe. Not sure. It's a Yahoo account, so it's public. And anyway, if I could trace it…he's delayed it with a purpose, don't you think?"

_Yeah…he might even have written it right before he planned to shoot Lex, from his own house._ The thought made her shiver. She wondered if Lex was home yet. Suddenly she had a great desire to see him. Safe.

"I can dig into it, if you want," Chris proposed. "See what I can find…"

"You know what? It doesn't matter. You're right, no matter what you'd find, he won't be there anymore, and he's too smart to leave clues on how to catch him. Besides, I need to finish my own work." She grinned at him. "Thanks, though. You can go back to your level."

"No prob." He got up and to her surprise awkwardly patted her shoulder. "Glad you're taking this all in stride, Chloe. We don't see you very often anymore in the basement, down with the gnomes and the worms, but still…I'm glad you're ok."

Guilt stabbed her in the stomach. Yeah. She'd left the basement without hardly a glance back, even though she'd been there for almost a year. "Thanks, Chris," she muttered, and his fine smile told her that he'd both meant that gentle jibe, and that he wasn't angry. He gave her another pat.

"Happy New Year, if I don't see you again."

"Are you kidding? I'm working tomorrow, just like you. Shouldn't have taken all my days to go beaching in Miami."

"Me, I'm off," Chris said smugly. "Lan Party through the New Year. 48 hours straight."

"That sounds…lovely," she said, and he laughed.

"See you around, Chloe."

"Same to you, Chris."

He went back to the basement, back to his RPGs or his MMO or his Tetris or whatever it was he was currently hooked on. Chloe went back to her articles. She typed them quick and with a certain nonchalance, and was just saving them as her cell mewed.

"Hey," she said, accepting Spaghetti.

"Hey," Spaghetti said back. "Are you almost finished yet?"

She pressed ctrl-s. "Almost."

"Do you like white wine or rose with your salmon?" Well, whatever he was, he didn't sound angry about her keeping her yap firmly shut about super powerful Kent boys.

"White," she said, closed down her computer and grabbed her coat. "Are you home yet?"

"Quarter of an hour. I'm just wrapping things up here."

Wonderful. That left her some time to go home, shower and put on some clean clothes. "I'll be there in 30 minutes."

"Good," Lex purred. "I'll be waiting." He disconnected. Chloe didn't bother waiting for the elevator and ran down the stairs and through the hall and all the way to her car.

TBC.


	23. Chapter 23

I have no clue where most of the conversation in this chapter came from

I have no clue where most of the conversation in this chapter came from. I swear I just started typing and when I read it back this is what had dribbled onto the screen. Ah well. Lots of internal monologue and weirdness from Lex this chapter. Some sex, nothing graphic (more next chapter  He still needs to recuperate).

Kudos as always for the reviews

**Twenty-three: In which Lex fails as a detective and Chloe takes icy vengeance**

The first thing that struck Lex when he opened the door to Chloe Sullivan's beaming face was how easy it was to invite her over, and how naturally they'd slipped into this habit of her coming over.

He didn't think he'd ever seen her apartment. Nor did he particularly want to. He was considering giving her a key to his flat, though, and telling Victor and the other guys downstairs that she was to be let in whenever she felt like it.

It was dangerous thinking like that, idiocy, even; he really shouldn't consider opening his private places to—a reporter of all things! He couldn't help it, though. Neither could he help the smile spreading all over his features when she stepped inside and said, "Miss me?" He hadn't, not really, he'd been too busy sucking Clark empty, blackmailing his personnel and instructing his scientists, but he was happy to see her and his new knowledge of her only made her more endearing.

Who could have thought that this sprightly girl with the wicked tongue and the curiosity of a cat could have been such a great secret keeper? Who knew she could lie so well and was so loyal to those who asked for her secrecy? Admirable.

And quite adorable.

"Desperately," he said, pushed the door closed and her against it so he could kiss her properly. She tasted like mint and smelled overwhelmingly of shampoo and hair mousse. Chloe kissed him back, then suddenly seemed to remember something because she went 'Mmm!!' in his mouth, but since Lex was pleasantly occupied and not really interested in what she had to say for another 30 seconds or so, he didn't pull back. She 'mm!!-ed' again, then, when he just kept kissing her, relaxed against the door and participated.

The second he pulled back, though, she said, "Lex, I got a message. From Edge!"

It was the one sentence that shook him to the foundations of his romantic inclinations, cracked them and made them crumble. "What?"

She pulled a printed piece of paper out of her bag and gave it to him. "Here. I got it this afternoon. It just…I just got it. I couldn't believe my eyes!"

Lex skimmed the lines of the message, then forced himself to display, if not romantic sweetness, then at least some sort of manners. "Would you like something to drink?"

"Yeah, yeah," Chloe said, following him inside. "I'll pour some myself."

He'd lit candles, but now he turned up the dimmers, eyes glued to the paper, and sat down on the couch. Chloe found the bottle of chilled white wine, got herself a glass and plunked down next to him, talking all the time.

"It came in at about three, here, you can see the time on the print-out. I asked Chris to have a look at it—Chris is our house-nerd, he knows tons about computers and all things digital. He said it could have been a delayed message—That's what I thought, you see, that it was composed on another date. You can't see THAT on the print-out, it says it's been sent today, but I thought it was unlikely that it was, because…"

"According to this message, I'm dead," Lex said, listening and reading at the same time.

"Yeah." She sounded just a little put out, for some reason. Lex raised a questioning eyebrow. "That's what I thought," she said, smiling a little. "According to Chris this message was created on the day you were shot—I'm guessing either just before or after he did it. And he also mentions returning my hand bag. So he definitely must have done something with it. But…"

"That is odd," Lex muttered. "It didn't take that long before Cla—" _Don't go there_. "…before I was admitted to the hospital. It can't have been more than about one or two hours after I was shot that the world knew I hadn't died. Maybe not that I was stable, as far as I know the information they leaked to the press was nominal, still, if he were anywhere near a television or the internet…"

A mystery. He dove into it with the same pleasure a newt might exhibit jumping into a pond a hot day. Chloe crept up against him, and he thoughtlessly draped his arm around her shoulder, pulling her into the mystery with him.

"And that reference to your bag is strange as well. Because if he sent this message after his little showdown," to his contentment he could talk about it like that now, without hardly feeling a twist in his stomach, "it must have been very, very shortly afterwards, or he would have known I was still alive. It would make more sense if he'd sent it in advance and anticipated that I was dead—but if so, he'd also anticipated that you'd be there, and that he'd take your purse with him and do something with it."

"Right," Chloe said. "And he didn't DO anything with it, that's the weird part. I mean, I took it to the police and they had a look at it. I looked at it. Clark…" she hesitated, then persisted, "Clark scanned it from back to front. Nothing. He didn't put anything in it, and he didn't take anything out either."

_Clark scanned it from back to front…_Lex suppressed a shiver. He doubted Clark had used any electronic devices during his 'scan'. Biting down gently on his tongue until the urge to grill her on all things Clark-related shrunk from an inferno of need to a mild curiosity, Lex focused on the A4 lying on his knees. "Well then," he said, briefly tightening his fingers on her arm. "We can assume that Edge did not, indeed, tamper with your handbag. Maybe he did something else. You have it with you, don't you?"

"Uhuh. Here."

"Can I have a look at it as well?"

"Of course." She placed the thing on his lap. "I figured you wouldn't trust other eyes. I put everything in that I had with me that evening. The same," she added after a moment's thought, "that was inside when I got it back. I left out anything I put in after Christmas."

"Clever girl," said Lex, although he was somewhat daunted by how well she seemed to know him.

Chloe's beam, however, only contained affection and satisfaction. "That's me!"

Lex cleared the sitting room table; he only had to move an ash tray he had once stolen from a club. The club itself no longer existed. No one tried to drug his friends without suffering the consequences.

He spread the contents of the bag out on the table, putting them exactly three inches apart to get a clear overview. It wasn't half as much as he'd been afraid of. After seeing her drag half a Christmas tree out of this bag, he'd thought she'd be carrying enough make-up and other womanly accessories around to face-paint an army of clowns. No, for a woman's purse, this one was almost empty.

There was that old phone of hers, with the worn-down Crows hanger dangling from a woven cord. Her wallet (also scanned by Clark, Chloe said). A package of tissues. Two lipsticks, one pink, one red, and one Labello stick. One crossword pocket book. Two pens. One box of eye shadow (blue-gray). One small note book with a pencil attached. Three crumpled receipts (one for a pair of boots, one from Starbucks, and one from Macy's, and he did note that she had bought a marzipan alien during that particular shopping spree). One roll of Menthos. One half-empty packet of chewing gum. Two crumbly and uncovered Oreo cookies. A leaflet for discount at a pizza restaurant. One eye pencil. One mascara. And that was it.

He put them in order of size, until they were laid out as neat as a butterfly collection and stared at them, wondering what Edge could have done with either the bag or something that had been inside of it.

Beside him, Chloe made a weird sound; as if she was choking on her wine. When he faced her to see if she needed pounding on the back she just waved, smiled, and said, "No, I'm fine, go on, go on. It's interesting seeing you at work."

"You're laughing at me," he realized, baffled.

"No! No, I'm not. Well, maybe a little." She grinned. "You're really cute, sorting through all my personal things as if they're holding the all the answers of the universe."

"42," Lex replied automatically. She raised her eyebrow. "Nothing. And I'm not 'sorting through your personal things', I'm looking for a clue as to why Edge puts so much emphasis on that bag of yours."

"I know, I know," she said soothingly. "It's just…very methodical."

"Says the girl who covered a wall with pictures of out of the ordinary occurrences." He disregarded the make-up, the food and the tissues, figuring there was nothing Edge could have done with those. His hand hovered over the note book.

"I wouldn't exactly call that methodical, more a bit like—I checked that," Chloe interrupted herself, and snatched it from under his hand. "There's nothing inside of it I haven't written myself."

Lex felt a slow smile stretch his lips. "And you don't want me to read it."

She pressed it a little closer to her chest. "Not particularly."

"Now you've made me curious."

"I'll destroy it at the first possible moment. Wait, you have a hearth, don't you?"

Lex clacked his tongue. "Live and let die, Chloe. I'm not that desperate to read your notes. Besides, you've kept it in this bag all the time. Who's to say I didn't read it through when you were in the bathroom during one of your earlier stays?" He plucked the pad out of her fingers and put it back on the table, giving it a gentle pat, smiling innocently into her wide, appalled eyes. "Hmm," he murmured. "If the idea alone scares you so much maybe I really should try to get my hands on it."

"I'm going to have to buy a lock for my note book," Chloe breathed with mock-horror.

"Try writing in code," Lex advised. He picked up the crossword pocket. "I'm pretty good with a lock pick. Then again, cracking codes was one of my favorite pastimes when I was a teenager."

"Really?"

"No. It's horribly boring. I just couldn't stand knowing that some CIA hotshot was smarter than me. But Navajo is…really difficult to pick up." He leafed through the crosswords, most of which were only half finished, and several of which had been furiously crossed out entirely. _Not very surprising, there's no way she could ever solve this with this many wrong answers._ He tried very hard not to laugh at Chloe's answer to 'The longest river in Russia', but knew he'd blown it when a small fist pounded on his arm (though far higher than where it might actually hurt him).

"Hey! Stop laughing at me! It's MY book, and I can do with it what I want!"

"If you are allowed to laugh at my—ow! Ow, stop hitting me, you mad woman!—if you can laugh at my methodical approach then I'm allowed to laugh at your crossword blundering. I mean…the _Rhine_?"

"So I suck at topography," Chloe sulked.

"Not just topography by the looks of it," Lex chuckled to himself, and again he had to defend himself from an enraged reporter. Of course, in the end, they ended up making out again and the offending book ended up on the floor under the table.

After that, Lex remembered that a perfectly good meal was going to waste in the kitchen, so they moved over, Chloe carrying the candles, and snarfed down what might have been a highly romantic dinner if Chloe hadn't by now been too hungry to stare meltingly into Lex's eyes—which would have been occupied with other things anyway, since Lex was still milling over the significance of the Return of the Bag.

He couldn't stand not knowing why Edge had sent the thing back, and it absolutely drove him nuts not being able to find any explanation. Serial killers often left the police clues, either to play around with them or to lead them to them because of some inane desire to be caught and go down with a bang. But Edge wasn't a serial killer. As a matter of fact he wasn't even a killer.

So why, _why_ the bag?

After dinner he spent another half hour going first through the bag itself (which was now empty, and looked quite harmless) and then once more through everything on the table while Chloe observed him with an indulging expression on her face and spoon-fed him raspberry sorbet ice cream whenever he sat back tot think.

"You're not bored?" he asked at one point, more than aware that he was acting selfishly. She promptly shoved another spoonful of ice cream into his mouth.

"Nah. It's kinda cute seeing you obsess over my handbag. Did you ever consider collecting stamps?"

"Mm," said Lex. _Been there, done that. Stamps are the most boring things on earth. Even collecting empty Coke bottles holds more appeal. At least you can smash them over people's heads. _He picked up the plump phone. "Can I look through this?"

"Sure. I don't really use it anymore; I'm not sure if it has any juice left." She trailed her tongue suggestively over the spoon, but to no avail. Lex was in full research mode, and his frustration only fuelled his intent to solve the riddle. She might have danced naked on the table and all he would have said was 'Don't disturb the objects, please.'

_Well, maybe not. I might be persuaded to postpone my research. But she isn't dancing and damn it! I want to KNOW!_

The phone beeped imploringly when he turned it on, but showed one slender battery stripe.

"0007," Chloe said. Abandoning her sexy spoon-slavering, she set to unabashed ice cream consumption. "My password."

"Thanks." He typed it in and studied the list of options now made available. It really was an old-fashioned little phone: it didn't even have a proper menu with an icon carousel, just that list. _But what could he have done with this cell? Put in his number? Like that would make sense. Leave a hint in an unsent text message?_ He pressed through to the messages. _We're all idiots. We should have had this phone checked for his prints. Although…no, he'd have worn gloves. I'd have worn gloves if I wanted to leave an obscure hint and drive me mad._ There were two sent messages. One was to Clark, and the other to Lois. Lex exhaled forcefully.

"Nothing?" Chloe asked.

"Nothing," Lex said.

"Want more ice cream?"

"No." He turned the phone round and round in his fingers. "Does this thing have WAP?"

"Internet?" she laughed. "God no, it's an old model. It doesn't even have GPS, as far as I know."

So he couldn't have used it to send that mail either. That would have been Lex's last guess. How annoying. How incredibly, infuriatingly annoying! There was just NO REASON for Edge to leave mysterious hints about returning Chloe's bag. He hadn't DONE anything with it, or with anything inside of it. Then WHY did he keep mentioning it?

"This is going to keep you busy for the rest of the night, isn't it?" Chloe asked, partly amused, partly mournful.

"No," Lex said. Edge had shot five holes into him. He definitely wasn't going to drive a wedge between Lex and his perfect woman. He put down the phone and shoved the whole contents from the table into the bag. "No, it's not. Sorry. I'm all yours now."

"All? Oh goody!"

"There's no need to be sarcastic."

"I'm not being sarcastic. I'm happy! You see, this carton's gotten all soggy and I desperately need a surface to put my ice cream on…"

"Oh god, spare me."

"So kindly take off your shirt."

"Do you know how COLD that stuff is?"

"That's why it's called ICE cream, Lex. And really, you should know better than to ignore me for two hours."

"I haven't ignored you! I'd never do that. I'm not that…"

"Off with the shirt, Lex!"

Lex whined. Chloe smiled vindictively. Finding no mercy in her eyes, Lex slowly began to undo his shirt buttons. "I don't understand people's enthrallment with ice cubes and ice cream on other people's bodies," he griped. "What's so attractive about goose bumps?"

"This isn't about attraction, Lex, my sweet," Chloe purred. She tugged at his open shirt, and he obligingly took it off and threw it onto another chair. She pushed him down flat on the couch. "This," she sat down on his stomach, ignoring both the jut of his hipbones and the bruise on his belly, and scooped out a huge dollop of half-molten sorbet, "is aaaaallll about revenge."

Splat.

"Uuhhhhhhhhgh!"

Revenge was sweet and tasted of raspberries. It was also very, very cold. But after the first spoonful or so, Lex found that he didn't really mind.

"I think I'm going into hypothermic shock," Chloe murmured sleepily. Lex wasn't surprised. She'd eaten about half a gallon of ice cream, and after she'd had her fill of vengeance he'd covered her with most of what was left. However, her hypothermia must come from inside, because he'd licked her nice and clean—there was something to say for using a woman's chest and stomach for a plate. Porcelain never squealed quite so delightfully. And if flesh, all that lovely pale flesh made the ice melt faster, well, that was something he could live with.

He put his hand on her stomach and was somehow reminded of overripe peaches, all sticky and soft and sweet. _Lex, my man, your romantic similes leave something to be desired. _ "Nah, you'll be fine. Torso's nice and warm, and the extremities will take care of themselves."

She chuckled. "You've had much experience with hypothermia, then?"

"Apart from a truly horrible vacation in the Alps? Not really."

"Hypothermia in the Alps? Sounds like some twisted Candlelight novel."

Lex tried to stroke his way up to her ribs but noticed that his hand was firmly stuck to Chloe's skin. _Shouldn't rub frozen skin anyway, _he thought. "There were no pretty nurses. And it was more of a family thing, really. Avalanches really suck when you're skiing."

"You got caught in an avalanche?" Chloe changed her position and her flesh unstuck from his with a sucking sound. Lex noted with interest that her breasts were glued together; when she sat up, it took at least three seconds before they slowly parted and settled back in their natural position. Molten raspberry sorbet was truly extraordinarily sticky.

"Mmm. Well, it was only a small avalanche. Enough to swallow the entire Luthor family, though. Mom, Dad, little Alexander. They found us within half an hour, though, so we just got a bit chilled. But after we'd gotten back to the hotel Dad bought up all the literature he could find on hypothermia and made me learn it by heart in case it ever happened again." He smiled at the memory, one of the few happy ones he had of his childhood—a time when he'd actually loved his father and known he'd been loved in return, and when his mother hadn't been sick…when Julian wasn't even considered yet, let alone conceived and then killed by the one who bore him.

Chloe laughed softly. "Little Alexander? How old were you?"

"I don't know. Seven? Maybe eight. I still had hair. Did you ever go skiing?"

"Once," she said, sucking pink syrup from the back of her hand. "When my mom was still…Well, not crazy. I was very small, can't have been older than four. I had skis this big," she measured about fifteen inch. "We didn't go anywhere fancy like the Alps, though, just some resort near Denver. Can't remember much of it, just flashes. Standing between my dad's legs while he skied down the slope. I can still remember how safe it felt, skiing like that. And we had a snow fight with the other kids in the hotel. And Mom helped me build a snow deer, because I thought a snowman was boring. In the end it looked more like a capybara, but it was still way better than all those boring snowmen." She found another drop of raspberry on her stomach, swiped it up with her finger and licked it off. "But after dad damaged his knee skiing was out, and we went on Summer holidays instead. Why am I completely naked and are you still wearing your pants?"

"Because you're an exhibitionist?" Lex suggested.

"I am not!" She rubbed her hands with a comical frown of disgust. "Ugh, I feel like a toffee that's been out in the sun for too long. I need another shower." Lex smiled. She patted her flat palm on his tacky chest, thereby producing a couple of horrible sticky noises. "So do you."

"I shouldn't get my bandages wet. Or wait, let me guess, you spilled sorbet on my shoulder."

"I did nothing of the sort!" Chloe protested hotly. "But if you don't want to have a…"

Lex sat up and licked the inside of each of her breasts. "Relax. I'd like nothing better. Although I must say that this is pretty damn cool, too…" He pressed her breasts together, then released them, grinning as they remained that way until Chloe shook her upper body and they flopped loose again.

She sighed and shook her head, laughing. "Christ, Lex. How old are you?"

"Old enough to appreciate breasts. Come on, help me up. And don't…" He burst out laughing as Chloe slid off the couch, produced a wet, sopping sound and gave a startled scream. "…step into the sorbet container," he finished belatedly.

He still thought he looked like a total moron with plastic wraps around his thighs and left arm to keep his dressings dry, but Chloe didn't seem to mind. Usually, when he took showers with women he loved he had sex with them (what else was the attraction of shared showers?), but at the moment he didn't trust his legs enough to keep him up on slippery wet surfaces. Chloe didn't seem to mind that either. Instead, she went down on him and he almost ended up on his ass anyway, because his knees refused to lock when he needed them to. Thankfully, Chloe had enough presence of mind to lean her weight against his thighs and push her hands against his stomach, thereby pinning him against the wall and saving him from crashing.

"You're wobbly as a newborn foal, Lex," she grinned as she climbed to a standing position, spat and opened her mouth to the water pouring down on them. "You really need to drink more milk or take calcium tablets."

_Calcium…_Completely unbidden, an image he thought he'd repressed flashed before his eyes: _a man with no legs and only one arm, but with bones protruding inches from his stumps, raising a glass of Champagne to toast to Progress_…

He shook the memory out of his head, wondering why the hell he should think about that now, and said, "According to the doctor, what I need is bed rest."

Chloe snickered. "Is that so?"

"Yes." He turned off the shower and handed her a towel.

"Bed…rest."

"Well, let's start with the bed and see where we get with the rest, shall we?"

Fellatio was no problem at all if he could do it lying down.

"Are you doing anything tomorrow evening?" Chloe asked later, when they were watching what had to be the very last episode of the Clint Eastwood movie marathon that had lasted all through December. It was desperately awful and had Clint Eastwood SINGING, but since they'd missed most of it due to other occupations neither of them felt like turning it off.

"Tomorrow evening…?" Oh. New Year's Eve. He grimaced. "Company party."

"Wow, that sounds as if you can hardly wait for it to begin."

"Uhuh. Dozens of people who all pretend to know me sucking up to me hoping I'll notice them, their daughters, their wives, their sons, their entire fucking family, doesn't matter who, and give them that one-in-a-million chance to gain riches. Smiling all evening as if I give a damn and being charming to people who probably hung out the flag when I was shot—not to mention an entire evening being stalked by my beloved father…yeah, that's something I'm really looking forward to."

"You poor thing," Chloe said, and Lex, even though he wasn't even in research-mode any longer, nevertheless detected sarcasm.

"Why? What are your plans? I could take you along and tell you interesting rumors about the people we meet…"

"And spread some pretty interesting rumors of our own," Chloe said. "No thanks, I don't think I'm ready for that yet."

He really couldn't blame her, even though he was a little disappointed, somewhere deep inside, that she'd feel that way. He wouldn't mind being seen with her, even if it did provoke rumors. Hell, she'd saved his bloody _life_, what did he care about what other people thought? "You wouldn't need to come _with_ me, if you don't want that. But you could just be there? As a journalist?"

"Ugh." She stroked an apologetic hand over the nearest part of his anatomy, which happened to be his lower ribs. "I'm sorry, that came out really harsh. I didn't mean that I don't want to be associated with you—I mean, I am anyway, after that whole Edge thing they're having polls at the Planet when you're going to marry me or get me promoted and all, it's just that those kind of parties…"

"Really?" asked Lex. _They're wondering when I'm going to __**marry**__ Chloe?_ Somewhere far in the back of his head a small bell started tolling out an alarm.

"…make me feel terribly out of pla—eh?"

"Nothing," said Lex. "Nothing. You're right, you'd hate every minute." _I usually do_.

"Lois told me she'd kill me if I walked out on a family festivity again," Chloe entrusted his bandaged shoulder. "So I said I'd come. On the other hand," she looked up, "I doubt she'd actually resort to homicide if I didn't show up, so if you want me to be there…"

What she wanted, was to go and be with her friends and family. The idea of going to a LuthorCorp party filled her with horror—and so it should. That she still offered to accompany him, no matter how unenthusiastically, filled him with tenderness. Girls like Chloe didn't belong in the shark pond. Really, he shouldn't have asked.

"No," he said, kissing her nose. "You should go and celebrate New Year's Eve with your friends. It's…"

"When can you leave your party?" she interrupted him. "I can go at about one."

"One. Yes, I think that would be the minimum length of stay…"

"One-thirty then."

"Here," Lex said, considering his windows and the state of his injuries. "My place."

"Is the front desk open on New Year's Eve?"

"I'll give you my key," said Lex.

Chloe brightened until she was almost blinding him. "Really? You will? I mean…you're okay with that?"

"Why?" Lex asked in return. "Are you planning to redecorate when I'm not here? Because if that is the case I won't give you my key. Chloe, I have nothing to hide from you." _Well, not anything that you can find here, anyway; mental note to self: make sure that laptop, if present in penthouse, is turned off at all times_, "So yes, you're welcome to come here whenever you like. Wait, I'll give you a spare right now, before I forget about it."

There was something about that delighted expression of hers that made him feel almost guilty, and slightly confused. He'd offered her whatever she could dream of, and here she was tripping high on the fact that he was giving her the key to his HOUSE. Should he have given it to her sooner? But he never did that. Not for this house. The Mansion in Smallville was the big 'come as you are' castle, the place where people (because of the gross neglect and incapability of his household staff) could enter and leave much as they liked as long as they steered clear of his den, but his penthouse was his real den. His LAIR. He hadn't even let another woman spend the night here before, let alone given her a key to the place.

He'd just put on boxers and was searching for the spare key in the upper drawer of the desk in his study when his cell rang. He found it back on the couch, checked the caller's identity and answered it.

"Hey Lex, it's Valerie Decan. Am I calling…is it convenient…eh…"

_Yes, dear, we've just finished round two and it'll be a while before we start round three._ "Valerie? Are you drunk?"

Chloe sat up in bed, immediately radiating badly hidden suspicion. Lex grinned and sat down next to her, indicating that he really had nothing to hide.

"What? No! Well, maybe a little. Lex, that substance you delivered to the lab this afternoon…I have five doctors and three scientists breaking out the Champagne because of the properties it has. It's amazing! What is it, and where on earth did you get it?"

Lex moved the phone to his other ear. A flutter of excitement started in his stomach. "It's working? They've created another treatment?"

"No, I don't think so, they're still testing it, but…according to Reese the men upstairs are…eh…" she giggled, "ecstatic about the results." In the background, someone shouted, "They're coming their fucking brains out over this stuff!"

_Everybody's having a good night, then,_ Lex thought, smiling. "They're not combining it with the green rock, are they?"

"Hell, I don't know, I was just told to call you to say that however you got this, it's, and I quote, 'A bloody miracle', and that they're expecting to have a working treatment within two days." More voices in the background. "With a ninety-nine percent chance of total recovery," she added.

_Thank you, Clark Kent._ "Is one of the lab folk around? Greenfield? Or Banto?"

"Banto's here. You want to speak to him?"

"Yes. Please put him on." Lex talked business with Aoki Banto for a few minutes, reassuring himself that they were not polluting the precious blood with Kryptonite and simultaneously picking up quite a few interesting facts about the composition of Clark's blood. He'd promised Clark he wouldn't use it for any other purpose than curing cradle cancer—still, no one could fault him if he learned what he could from those who _could_ examine it with a clear conscience.

Its most important ability, however, was to heal. Banto wasn't sure if the healing power lay in the red blood cells or in the white, but that the blood could deal with any disease was a fact.

"Does it behave a little like mine?" Lex asked curiously.

"No," Banto said with a disdainful little chuckle, "no, this is different. Your blood…Nothing personal, Mister Luthor, your blood's really interesting, but this stuff, this…this is the holy grail."

Huh. And thus he had been judged inefficient. "Gee. Thanks."

"I mean," Banto hurried to rephrase, "It doesn't even ACT like ordinary blood. It is blood, it has plasma and cells and everything, but it doesn't behave like it! I've never seen anything like it in my entire life!"

_And you never will, again_, Lex thought. Once again he ignored the question where he'd got it, told Banto to contact him the moment they completed the new treatment, and requested he put Valerie back on. She was definitely tipsy. "Aren't you giving the children an entirely wrong example?"

She snorted. "Lex, dear, it's almost eleven. They're fast asleep."

"Jessica might see you in a flash."

"With the things she's seeing I doubt seeing me somewhat inebriated will shock her. She's asked for you, by the way, Jesse. You should have visited them when you were here! Why didn't you? They all want to know how you're doing. Amy, too. Would it be possible for you to come by one of these days?"

"Sure," he nodded. "Maybe I can come by tomorrow. I'm still more or less on sick leave." He had considered visiting the kids this afternoon, but he'd gotten more or less stuck in the lab, instructing his oncologists and hematologists. It had been five before he knew it. "Tomorrow. Yes. Will you be there at two? If not, I know my way in." He was very much aware of Chloe's hand stiffening on his thigh. _Oops. That was not very tactical._ He covered the hand with his own. _Not that Chloe has anything to fear from Valerie…_

Valerie said she'd try to be there but that she might be in a meeting with Ronny's parents. Her absence, she added with just a hint of threat, should not keep him from seeing the children. Lex assured her that it wouldn't, and hung up.

"That was Valerie Decan," he said somewhat unnecessarily. "It turns out that Clark's blood…" He hesitated. "You know about my meeting with Clark this morning, do you?"

She nodded. "Yeah. You leeched him, right? For your Can…uh, your sick children. He came by this afternoon. Brought me coffee."

"Is that a hint?" Lex teased.

"No. No, it isn't." she laughed and chewed on a lock of hair. "For a change…Although I think I might like some more wine, and more cashew nuts."

"Be my guest," Lex said. "Ah, let me go and get your key."

When he came back both their glasses were full and Chloe was building a cashew nut tower on her side table. She was still chewing on that stray lock of hair.

"Here you go," Lex said, and handed her the key. He brushed the hair out of her face. "Don't eat your hair. I hate kissing people with hair between their teeth. But to continue where I left off, Clark's blood is going to cure my children. Valerie just called to say that my scientists are all going berserk, and that they'll likely have a cure within the coming two days."

"That's good news," said Chloe. "So…you're going to see them tomorrow? Those kids?"

"Yes. They all sent me get well cards when I was in the hospital."

"Oh, how sweet!"

"Yes," Lex murmured. "They are quite adorable." Chloe sipped her wine, squirming a little. He smiled and pulled her back against the left side of his chest. "Spit it out, Chloe."

"You'll get mad," she muttered.

_At jealousy?_ Hardly. "I doubt that," he said dryly.

More fidgeting. Finally, she blurted out, "That...Valerie Decan. What exactly, um, is she to you?" She flustered. "I mean, I know we didn't…you know, promise anything, but..."

"Nothing," Lex saved her, then frowned at himself, because Valerie wasn't 'nothing'. "She's a friend," he amended.

"Oh. Like me," Chloe said.

"Yes," Lex agreed, then, realizing what she was actually asking, shook his head and said, "No, not like you, not like you at all. You're much more than my friend." And then he kissed her because if he didn't she'd see his embarrassment, because this was the point where he should tell her that he loved her, but if he did, an alternate dimension would open, and in that alternate universe the words 'I love you' actually meant 'You can leave now', or something along those lines.

"Lex," Chloe started, and then another of his irrational fears made him cringe, because she looked as if _she_ was going to say 'I love you' now, and if she did, yet another alternate universe would open up, and in that universe someone else telling him that they loved him actually meant either 'I will die soon', 'I want to kill you', or simply 'I will leave you when you'll need me most'.

The alternate universe only opened up at the word 'love'. Not at 'you're the only good thing in my life' or 'you're my best friend' or anything else, just the word 'love', and only if he meant it. He hadn't said and meant it in years. It was highly irrational. Lex was very rational in analyzing his own irrationalities. But that was the thing about irrational fears; they could not be reasoned away.

He pressed his fingers against her lips. "Don't say it."

"Why not?"

"If you don't say it aloud, you won't have to take it back."

"Why would I want to take it back? Lex, you..."

_Because everybody else does, either by dying, or betraying me, or leaving me, or making me depend on them and then pulling away from me._ He would never, ever voice those thoughts, though. Saying that aloud would make him seem too pathetic for words. But curiously enough, he didn't feel like saying she was the one person he trusted and wanted to keep close to him either. He'd already said that, and she knew he felt that way. So he said nothing at all, shrugged, smiled furtively and simply kissed her, effectively shutting her up as well (a technique he used often and always with success), and tried to appear suave and cool instead of insecure and traumatized. Either his mask was that convincing, or Chloe was that great a lady that she pretended it convinced her, for she just sighed, and smiled, and cupped his jaws in her hands and kissed him back.

Who could have described his surprised when he let his head drop into his pillow, pulled Chloe more tightly against him and replied "I love you too," when she breathed those three destructive words into his skin.

Only when he repeated them in his head—_hell, what did I just say_?—and waited for the universe to shift and turn back on itself, he realized what he had done, and mentally slapped his forehead.

Stupid.

No, a natural reaction.

Still, stupid.

There had been a time that it seemed he fell in love with every girl he met, and blurted out 'I love you' whenever he'd finished introducing himself. It all seemed so very easy in those days, meeting them, at parties, at clubs, at take-over parties. Almost all the girls were pretty, and after a few glasses of champagne or a line of coke or two all girls seemed sweet. He may be a bald freak, but he wasn't entirely devoid of charm, and even when he was younger he'd been pretty good at reading people's character and know what to say to get closer. So easy. Meet them, talk with them, fall into bed with them…and subsequently fall in love with them. Say 'I love you' and actually mean it every time it passed his lips.

But 'I love you' so often changed into that sublimely pathetic 'But…I love you', and while he'd blurted that out with just as much feeling over the years, he'd come to resent saying that to the extent that he'd resolved never to say it ever again.

And he'd said it so _bloody_ often!

Let's see. There'd been Melissa Avery, whom he'd met when he was about sixteen, when he'd truly been—well, more or less innocent.

"_Lex, you're a self-serving fuck and your dad scares the shit out of me. Get out of my face before I mace you."_

"_But…I love you."_

"_Well, then you should have told your bastard father before he ruined us, you creep!"_

Carla Wakesfield. So hot she could barely wear clothes because she made silk melt and velvet smoke, but as stupid as she was blond.

"_You think you're so smart, Lex? Then why didn't you ever noticed I was, like, faking?"_

"_But…I love you."_

"_You're such an idiot. Do you really think I'd ever fall for a bald sucker like you? It was just a dare, nothing more."_

That one had hurt, even though, after eight years of being the only bald boy in an all-boys boarding school, he thought he'd heard it all. Privately, he'd thought he was rather cool. Most people seemed to think so; despicable but cool. Definitely worth hanging around with. Having some silly bimbo turn him down because of something that a. defined him and b. really shouldn't matter had really hurt his ego. Especially since he knew she HADN'T been faking. Ok, maybe she'd faked her feelings for him, but he knew from experience that women could NOT fake the clenching of their vaginal muscles when they came. Moaning, panting, bucking—fine. But not that clench.

He'd always hoped that the young god with the luxurious hair Carla married two years later was entirely unable to make her clench like that.

Then there had been a number of girls he hadn't even come to say 'I love you' to, just 'But…I love you' right after they said they were leaving. That wasn't love, just an unwillingness to be alone. And of course there'd been Crystal, who'd said, "_I won't be seeing you for some time."_

"_But…I love you."_

"_I love you too, sweetie, but your father's threatened my agency and I'd like to be able to do this job for another few years."_

And then there were the rows and rows of girls that had whimpered 'But…I love you' to him, and whom he had bought off with diamonds, pearls and trips to foreign capital cities. He couldn't even remember their names, or their faces. One of the reasons he'd decided the words 'But…I love you' would never leave his mouth again, was when he heard how utterly sad and needy they sounded from theirs.

Girls like Victoria Hardwick were actually the best of the lot. He'd never felt the need to say either 'I love you' or 'But…I love you' to her; nor had she ever felt the need to fake either orgasms or feelings for him. They'd just used one another, ruthlessly, both mentally and physically, appreciating each other's feints and thrusts and admiring each other's capabilities.

Lex had never said 'But…I love you' to either of his wives.

Whenever his blood threatened to leave the semi-permanent hard-on Desiree inspired and flowed back to his brains, enabling him to consider that maybe marrying Desiree under such circumstances might not be such a good idea, she'd breeze in in nothing but her hold-ups and a push-up bra, breathe some pheromones into his pores and whisper, "I'll let you fuck me on the piano if you just sign here, here and here," while she plucked a pen out of her cleavage and pushed a couple of forms into his hand.

Try saying no to that.

Try saying anything but 'Oh. Ok.' to that, let alone 'I love you' or 'But…I love you' when she knocks you over the head with your own antique brandy carafe.

When he found himself marooned, he'd screamed 'But…I loved you' until it left him hoarse, but he'd never said it to Helen, not to her face, anyway.

I love you was always followed by but…I loved you, and he'd sworn he wouldn't say the last thing every again.

And now he had said the first. Bloody hell.

Then he frowned, and told himself to grow a backbone. Tomorrow was the last day of this year. What better New Year resolution than to start a relationship, evolve in it and maintain it for, say, the next twenty years or so?

If Bridget Jones could do it, so could he.

And then Lex did a mental facepalm, because he really didn't want to compare himself with Bridget Jones.

TBC


	24. Chapter 24

Hello

Hello! Well, this chapter should make some people happy  This chapter is strong R for sex, I guess.

As always, thanks for reviewing!

Twenty-four: In which there is sex against windows

The party at LuthorCorp main office started at nine. Lex arrived at nine-thirty. A growing crowd of glittering women was already milling about, supplemented by a large number of self-important looking males in measured suits. Spotless waiters and waitresses in starched black and white uniforms buzzed through the great hall. The fountain in the center had been filled with champagne for the occasion; from a distance, Lex thought it looked just like a fountain of piss.

He put on his 'having a pleasant evening' mask, took a deep breath and walked inside.

He was recovering quite well, as Dr. Scanlan had told him this afternoon when he removed the stitches from Lex's temple and checked his other wounds, but he still wished he were home lying on the couch with a double Irish coffee. After his visit to the children and the check-up at the hospital he felt…not tired, exactly, but languid. He wasn't looking forward to an entire evening of standing.

"Mister Luthor! Lex!" a gorgeous, empty-eyed blonde he recalled meeting once before greeted him with a mouthful of pearly jackets. He smiled, giving her the perfunctory eye-fuck, which made her giggle and push out her breasts.

_Roo-coo, _Lex cooed inside. Her imagined feeding her a handful of corn. "Good evening…Jennifer, wasn't it?" Those necklaces with one's own name in golden letters were horribly awful, but came in very handy when you'd forgotten a name; it was like a distinguished name tag.

The girl, apparently forgetting that she was wearing her name around her neck, fluttered her eyelashes, flattered that he'd remembered his name. Or that she thought had remembered his name. "Yes. You can call me Jenny, though. You used to call me Jenny." She smiled suggestively, and Lex was reminded of a very beautiful piranha.

_The only question is, did I have sex with this piranha or only flirt with her?_

"Yes," he said, walking up with her towards the piss fountain. "I remember." He mimicked her wicked smile, although he couldn't for the world recall what last name followed Jenny, what she did, what he'd done with her and where. Luckily, Jenny was easily fooled.

"I heard about that awful business at Christmas," she said. "Are you completely recovered now?"

"Not really," Lex replied, lifting two glasses of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter. He handed her one and took a sip from the other. "I still tire easily. I'm afraid I won't be able to stay very long."

Jenny looked at him with real pity and false concern. "O dear! Should I get you a seat?"

"Nah." He leaned a little closer to her, presented her with smirk #2 and murmured, "People might get the wrong impression, if you know what I mean." He then spent a couple of amusing seconds watching Jenny try and find the double meaning in a remark that actually had no meaning at all. In the end she just laughed her tinkering laugh, and suddenly he missed Chloe—missed her desperately. She wouldn't have laughed, she'd have said he was full of shit or just lifted her eyebrows. Lex repressed a sigh, no longer entertained by this silly girl. He deftly managed to get rid of Jenny by introducing her to some hotshot lawyer of his father's.

So far he hadn't seen Lionel yet; he'd like to keep it that way for as long as possible. Since Lex hadn't officially taken over again, chances were Dad was going to make some kind of sob speech at eleven forty-five, lamenting the sad accident his beloved son had befallen, making some wise-crack about something or anything that had happened the past year, and hug Lex in front of all his top-salary employees and partners.

Lex hated those kind of hugs.

He'd craved being loved, hugged, played with and touched as a child, and even as a young man it would have been nice to get a well-meant slap on the shoulder once in a while instead of a cold 'Well done, son, I'm proud of you.', but by now the moment Lionel laid hands on him, be it for a camera embrace, a possessive arm around his shoulder or even a worried palm against his cheek, Lex's entire body screamed FAKE; he'd freeze and only wanted OUT of it. There was no love lost between the two of them, and that was fine, but pretending that there was stroked against Lex's non-existent hair.

He downed the rest of his champagne and fished another glass from another tray. People walked up to him to greet him. He was pleasantly surprised to find more genuine pleasure to see him in people's faces than hidden dislike; it turned out he wasn't half as unpopular as he'd thought.

Of course he wasn't really unpopular. Hell, he could charm blowfish, of course he wasn't unpopular.

Not really. He just seemed to forget that he wasn't.

Well, being shot five times and told that you could have been roomies with Hitler tended to do that, he guessed: dent one's self-esteem.

He drank more champagne. In combination with the painkillers he was still taking it made him mildly buzzed, which made it easier to talk nonsense with all the people he met.

"Oh, Lex, sir!"

Excusing himself from a boring conversation with a promising new business associate, Lex turned around to find a middle-aged woman in a slightly too-revealing dress walk up to him, a broad, warm smile on her stern handsome face.

"Mary! I didn't know you'd be here!" He kissed her on the cheek and she did hug him, but there was nothing fake about it. Nor was it clinging or hard, just a short squeeze of arms around his shoulders before she pulled back.

"Of course I'm here," she said, smiling. "I'll have to take down any appointments you manage to hoard this fine evening. Where'd you be without me?" She looked him up and down, nodding in appreciation. "You're looking good. Of course that says nothing. Are you alright? Should you be standing here like this?"

"Well, I just lean, casually, you see…" He demonstrated his draping technique on a table, and she smiled.

"I guess you don't want to sit down," she understood. She sighed. "I for one wouldn't say no to a comfy chair. I've been on my feet the entire evening, and heels really aren't made for those kind of things."

Lex studied the slightly too-revealing dress (it was sleek and dark blue, with a very low neckline, the hem almost touching the ground and with a modest split on one side; all in all very lovely but he didn't want to be distracted by the cleavage of a woman over forty-five, no matter how well-preserved) and smirked.

"You could always put on hiking shoes, or sneakers. No one would notice."

She swatted at him with her matching hand bag, not coming anywhere near hitting him. "Don't be absurd, sir."

"Would you like another glass?" Lex asked, trading in his empty glass and getting two new ones.

"Aren't you taking medication?" Why was it that any woman older than him felt the need to mother him?

"Yes," he said, raising his glass in a toast. "The combo is thrilling." And when she raised not her own glass but her eyebrows in an exasperated 'Oh, Lex, sir, you infantile moron!' expression, he added, "It brings a flush to my face and adds to the overall healthy appearance I'm trying to generate."

Mary shook her head, but said nothing. She had once found him passed out on two chairs in his office after…yes, that had been the day after he'd found out that a man who had once been one of his leading scientists had set up his private horror theatre in Ohio. Seven dead and five missing so far. It had given Lex quite a shock. Once over the shock, he'd given a discrete man the location of the scientist's residence and had retired to his office with three business proposals, a draft for a speech, a couple of budget plans he needed to check out, and a bottle of Scotch. Whether it was that initial shock or the codeine he was taking at the time (for yet another skull fracture; people SO loved to give him a concussion) he still didn't know but whichever of the two it was, it did not mix very well with Scotch. Hence Mary's disapproving face being the first thing he saw when he opened bleary eyes the following morning. The only thing she had said was, "Late night, Sir?" while opening the window, picking up the empty bottle and putting it under her arm and placing a glass of water in front of him. "I'll get you a cup of coffee."

He had used the ten minutes it took her to fetch coffee to drink the water, wonder at the dismal pain in his head and take more codeine. Without a single comment Mary brought him one cup of coffee, one dry croissant, a toothbrush with a pea-sized daub of tooth paste on top of it, and the papers he would need for the meeting that would start in another ten minutes. "Here, let me straighten your tie," was all she said when he went to take his toothbrush for a date to the bathroom. "If you wash and dry your face briskly you might be able to get some color on your cheeks."

He never knew whether he'd succeeded in rubbing some red into his pasty complexion. His colleagues and underlings seldom commented on his teint. He went through the meeting on auto-pilot (which nobody noticed), and if anyone did notice his pallor they kept quiet about it. All he knew was that Mary had saved his ass that morning _without berating him about it or ever mentioning it again_, and if she'd been younger he'd have proposed to her on the spot. Her at the time being forty-three to his twenty-six, not to mention strictly maternal in her cool affection towards him and not at all the kind of woman he would ever consider dating, let alone marrying, he had not proposed but instead given her a raise and her current occupation.

He had missed dealing with her personally these last few weeks. By the looks of her severe little smile, she hadn't missed it at all.

"It would be most embarrassing if you were to suddenly trip and fall over," she said dryly, wetting her lips with champagne without swallowing a drop.

Lex grinned and drank half of his glass. "Yes," he said, "it would, wouldn't it?"

She shook her head, but her severity dropped and she sipped her champagne, which he saw as a form of forgiveness. "It is good to see you back on your feet again, Lex. Please keep upright. I already have four appointments scheduled for you in the first week of January, and it would be nice if you could actually keep them."

"I was _ill_," Lex defended himself. "I may be able to lead meetings with a hangover or do factory inspections with a head injury but even I can't perform while suffering from the flu. And after that I was shot. I'm sure that provided a satisfying and acceptable excuse for my absence?"

"You might have tried for something a little less dramatic," she said, face expressionless. "I had a lot of trouble convincing certain people that it was not some elaborate ruse." Her eyes twinkled.

Lex remembered Nikolai Martrov's reaction and huffed. "You should know better than to make appointments for me with people that do not own a television. A notorious snob like me really can't be seen with someone who can't even boast at least Bang & Olufsen."

The children had not seen him on TV, but it turned out Jessica had seen him in a flash. She, more than anyone else, had been overjoyed to see him. She had hugged him as well, like children hugged people: a fierce clench around his chest. "I'm so glad you're ok," she had said, touching with unnerving precision the cloth right over each one of his wounds. "Amy said you were very sick."

"I was," Lex had said, briefly caressing the smooth skin of her scalp. She let him, even though she must be sensitive about being touched that way, both because that skin really was sensitive—_naked_—and because he shouldn't be able to touch it like that—he knew. He'd always felt the same. "But I'm fine now. She needn't worry. Neither should you."

"You're limping," she'd said accusatorily.

"Well, almost fine, then."

He sighed, and the pleasant intoxication suddenly made him feel unsteady and out of control instead of floaty. He leaned more of his weight on the little table. Mary put a respectful yet caring hand on his arm.

"Are you alright? If you like I can get a message to Mister Luthor and tell him you aren't feeling well."

Lex chuckled. "I doubt he'd take kindly to that." What he needed was more alcohol. He immediately tossed back the remnants in his glass. "I'm fine. I'm always fine. You know that."

"Yes…" she said slowly. "I know. The kind of fine that makes me worry hysterically about my job."

Lex snorted. One of the reasons Mary was such a wonderful PA was because she wouldn't know what hysterical was if she stumbled over the shrieking fans at a Michael Jackson concert. Where she'd never be; she liked Chopin.

"At least have a beignet," she said, taking two from the tray of a passing waitress. She laughed at the open revulsion he must have displayed. "Come on, have one. It'll ground you. You'll see, you'll feel better with something in your stomach soaking up all that alcohol."

Lex regarded the first class cinnamon-sugary sponge held up on a cheerful red napkin and wondered if eating it would make her shut up about his 'delicateness'. He thought it just might, and if he did, she wouldn't cast him disapproving glances if he washed it away with more Dom Pérignon. That was the trouble with employees you once allowed to approach you personally instead of professionally: once they'd had a taste of that freedom, you couldn't take it away again. Or at least not here, while he tried to ignore that cleavage of hers. In the office it was an entirely different matter, of course.

"Yes, Mary," he drawled compliantly, accepted the golden pastry and nibbled at the edge of it. It was excellent. And curse her maternal instincts, she was right about some sugar intake stabilizing his equilibrium as well. Thank god she didn't smile that sublimely irritating knowing smile he just KNEW she was capable of, just nodded sharply and commenced to discuss business with him.

He'd managed to steer clear of Lionel for more than an hour, but at least twelve other employees expressing their heart-felt happiness at his recovery, two old friends (from his old wild days as Metropolis' notorious Bad Boy) who had managed to make a career worthy of being invited to Luthor Parties and who wanted his promise that he'd go hang out with them some night, one and a half bottles of champagne later, and a with growing difficulty to make his legs move the way he wanted them to, he finally failed to distinguish his father's mane in time and make a detour.

"Hello, Lex," silky tones sounded from his left, immediately followed by, "Please excuse us," to the people Lex was conversing with. Lex wavered as strong, thin fingers clasped around his shoulders and gently lead him away; he grimaced as his knees quivered. Lionel observed him with that familiar, slightly worried expression that had a mocking smile hiding just under the surface.

"Are you quite all right, Son?" he asked, and somehow he managed to make it sound like an insult instead of genuine concern. Immediately Lex's hackles rose—that is to say, the back of his head began to prickle, since there wasn't anything to rise anymore.

"Why, yes, Dad, I'm doing exceptionally well. How are you?"

"You were late," Lionel said. "And you didn't have yourself announced. I didn't know you were here until half an hour ago."

"If you didn't know I was here, how do you know I was late?" Lex asked pleasantly. He hoped to god his legs would hold out. He really was doing well; his shoulder hardly hurt anymore, his left arm didn't hurt at all, and now the stitches were gone he could actually _feel_ the scar on his temple fading away. But by now his knees felt like cement, and it really wouldn't do to sprawl at Daddy's feet like a groupie in front of Elvis.

Lionel shot him a look of profound annoyance. "I was notified," he said.

"Ah," Lex replied noncommittally. "I thought you might dislike it if I took over just like that after you've put so much effort in keeping the company running without me." It was clear that Lionel was very much aware that Lex really didn't give a damn about what Lionel might like or dislike. Nevertheless he inclined his head.

"You're right about that. I'm always surprised at your…ah…consideration, Lex. Do forgive me."

"But of course," Lex said, and wobbled and resisted when Lionel tried to pull him into another direction. He really didn't want to saunter around, not after two hours of standing and solidifying.

"Are your injuries bothering you, Lex?" Lionel asked, making a show of stepping back and putting both hands on his son's shoulders.

Lex smiled, relishing the contact and hating the implications behind it. "I'm just a little stiff."

"Perhaps you should make it an early night. I shouldn't have insisted you come."

Immediately Lex resolved to stay on his feet until the last guest had crawled away—at least, until he remembered his date with Chloe. Lionel expected this reaction and he'd almost fallen for it, too. "Yes," he said, his tone now so insolent it almost made him want to swat _himself_, "I think I might do that. I am still recuperating, after all."

Lionel blinked, not used to Lex not rising to his bait. Then that sickening smile returned and he nodded. "I'm sorry, Lex. I hadn't thought of that. After all, it's less than a week since you were shot; this all must be exhausting."

"You can't imagine," Lex returned, just as sickeningly. _Any moment now and I'm going to puke._ Abruptly, he abandoned their old game—he was tired of dancing around to the tunes of the Art of War. "Talking about shooting, have you found out anything about Edge yet?"

Lionel's smile dropped like a discarded hat and so did his mask of fatherly concern. When he was really apprehensive about something, his face went blank as a marble statue's but for his eyes, that deepened in color. "No. He's completely vanished. I've checked everything: aliases, bank accounts, visa, everything. He doesn't use any electronic currency, he doesn't rent cars, he hasn't been seen anywhere. The man has disappeared from the face of the earth, and so has that other man, Simmons. At one point there was a lead—an anonymous plane departing from an open field west of Metropolis. If that was him, and it's the only indication we have, the destination of that plane is unknown."

"So he could be anywhere," Lex mused.

"Even here," Lionel finished his thoughts. "It could be a false trail. He could still be keeping an eye on you."

Lex shook his head. "I doubt he's remained in Metropolis. This is the only place people would recognize him. Unless," and he shot his father an ugly smile, "he changed his face, like his father."

Lionel's face remained impassive. Lex thought about mentioning the email Chloe had received the day before, then decided against it. It was bad enough that Chloe had been caught up in this dreadful vengeance business; he didn't want to draw his father's attention to her. He might suddenly be reminded of some retaliation plans of his own. No, Chloe had to be kept safely in the shadows, far away from the senior Luthor's investigations.

"If he has," Lionel said slowly, "you'd better keep yourself surrounded by those security people of yours. I mean it, Lex, keep yourself protected!"

"Why Dad, I'd almost think you're expecting another attack," Lex drawled. His breath hitched when his father clasped his hand around his shoulder, both with pain and with the emotion burning bright in the middle of that blank face.

"Stop playing around," his father spat. "Edge is insane, and unlike his father I have no means at all to control him. I don't ever want to see you in a hospital bed like that again, so make sure you keep yourself _safe_."

Just to rile him up, Lex thought about fawning 'Oh Dad, you DO care!' and embracing him in the center of this circus, but while the accompanying picture was gratifying, those burning eyes stopped him. It wasn't often his father displayed protective behavior towards him. He couldn't help but suck it up and hunger for more of it.

"I will," he said quietly. "I will, Dad."

"So who wants another pineapple beignet?" Lois hollered from the kitchen. "I've got a fresh batch coming up!"

Chloe wondered if she could possibly cram more deep-fried junk inside, caught Clark's eye, laughed and held up her hands. "It's all yours, Clark. I'm stuffed. To the gills."

"I've always known there was something fishy about you," Clark said, then hastily stood up and fled to the kitchen when Chloe made a dive for the nearest pillow. The good thing about having parties at Lois' flat was that she really couldn't care less about any mess they could make. One part of her overstuffed sofa was covered in powdered sugar, and one of Lois' friends, a girl called Esther who'd been a classmate in the early years of Lois' high school fiasco, had spilled a glass of cheap champagne over the table. Well, part over the table and part over herself; she had explosive laughing fits that made her drop whatever she was holding. Already Lois had made her laugh like that twice; Chloe suspected her cousin of doing that on purpose. As a matter of fact she seemed to pay careful attention to Esther's drinking pattern, and whenever the poor girl was taking a sip Lois would make a dry comment, hoping to make her friend spew like a champagne fountain.

Lana, who had been sitting across from Esther, had already moved to another chair._ Very smart of her, _Chloe had thought at the time. Lois had pouted. Her dry comments had somewhat lessened from the moment of Lana's move on.

Apart from Esther, there was another friend of Lois', a young man with a crew cut and light blue eyes that never stopped flitting around. Chloe gathered he was the son of one of General Lane's army buddies. She didn't much like Ewan, whom Lois kept calling Bushwhack for some reason. It was those roaming eyes; there was something edgy and sly about them.

Clark returned with a towering dish of slightly burnt beignets, followed on his heel by Lois toting two more bottles of cheap champagne. "Drink up, Chlo," she said, popping a cork and refilling Chloe's glass, "you're supposed to celebrate New Year's Eve in a state of semi-drunkenness. Or has your palate been spoiled by Lex's super duper 100 dollar a bottle bubbles?"

"Oh yeah," Chloe said, taking a sip of the bubbles that had probably cost less than 10 bucks. She thought they tasted just great, sweet and fruity, more like lemonade than that tart Magnum stuff. "You really can't serve me this bog water, you know. I'm used to Bolinger, now."

Clark, Lana and Lois snorted. "Does it taste like coffee?" Clark teased. "Bolinger?"

"You have a rich boyfriend?" Ewan (or Bushwhack, since it really fit him better) asked. "Why isn't he here? Too high and mighty to associate with us lowly plebeians?"

"That's not a very friendly thing to say," Lana said, smiling readily but with a minute line between her eyebrows. Chloe concurred. She'd understand (not like, but understand) hostility if Bushwhack knew she was dating Lex Luthor, but since he obviously didn't, she put another notch on her 'I don't like this fucko' guitar.

"Maybe too high and mighty for _you_," she said snarkily. She had enough trouble defending Lex from those who actually KNEW him, thank you very much; she really could do without defending him to some army schmuck who'd never even met him.

He let his light eyes rove over her, and his upper lip curled. Good, the feeling was mutual.

"Now, now," Lois said, all but pushing a pineapple beignet into Bushwhack's face. "No nasty comments on Lex. It makes Chloe unhappy—right, sweetie? And we don't want sour faces this evening. So let's all take another beignet, finish this bottle, and go and light some firecrackers. It got a few avalanche rockets from Dad. He thought we'd meet up in Smallville, but I thought Hey, the effect's probably much cooler in the city anyway, so…" her eyes sparkled.

"Uh," said Clark, "won't that be dangerous?"

Lois rolled her eyes. "Are there any potential avalanches in Metropolis?"

"No. Still…"

"You're such a ditz. They're just big firecrackers. They just sound like a forty ton explosion."

"Especially if you let them go off in a garbage can, or in a sewer pipe," Bushwhack added with a chuckle, and suddenly Chloe realized his appeal to Lois: he was just as dangerously irresponsible as her. Was that an army thing or what?

"I think I'll just stick to Roman candles and Sparklers," Lana said.

Half an hour later they were all cheering at the Chinese fountains and brightly colored sparks, passing the champagne around and drinking from the bottles. Lois and Bushwhack disappeared around the corner, and a few minutes later an enormous explosion rocked the street and made several car alarms go off. They returned giggling and nudging one another, more like a couple of kiddies than two grown-ups. The moment they got back Bushwhack began to unroll strips and strips of firecrackers; Chloe took a peek at the packaging and snorted as she read:

**2,000 Count Strip - WOLF PACK CRACKERS  
2,000 count strip of our ****maximum-load Wolf Pack firecrackers. **

**The loudest available by law.**_**A Phantom exclusive!**_

By the looks of it, he had at least twelve of such packs loaded into the back of his truck.

_Well, we're trying to scare off the ghosts of this year, aren't we? Unless they want to get deaf, they'd better make a run for it._

Clark disappeared as well, for a couple of minutes—to save someone from a horrible fate, most likely, but he was back before Lana even missed him, engrossed as she was in the lit sky and the noisy symphony of pre-New Year's bangs and rattles.

Chloe wondered if Chris would be able to hear the music of his computer game through the fireworks. Not if he lived anywhere near Lois, that's for sure: when Bushwhack lit the fuse of his 2,000 counter it was as if the world would end. Chloe watched her cousin and her weird army friend dance like Indians to the din of exploding firecrackers, smoke and sparks subtracting them from view and coiling around them in the breeze.

Clark and Lana stood huddled together, she with her back against his chest, he with his arms draped over her shoulders. They looked very much TOGETHER, and oddly distant.

The girl Esther stood gazing up at the sky, her arms wrapped around her body, and while she was smiling her cheeks were wet. Did she have anyone? If so, he or she wasn't here. _So_, Chloe wondered, _are those tears for herself and the smile for another, or is that smile a lie?_ The proper, sociable thing to do was distract her and talk to her, but it was impossible to speak over the crack of the _Wolf Pack, loudest available by law_, and Chloe did not much feel like being drawn into someone else's heartache. For the first time in years, her own heart felt whole and healthy, and even though she was alone now, the knowledge that she wouldn't be later this night warmed her like Cherry brandy.

She took a swig of Ballatore Gran Spumante (which sounded like expensive spume and tasted like lemonade with bubbles), then, deciding that New Year's Eve demanded being gregarious walked over to Esther, tapped her on the shoulder and held up the bottle of champagne.

Esther accepted it with a smile. She drank down half of what was left, wiped away her tears and grinned when she passed the bottle back. Thanks, Esther mouthed over the Wolf Pack. No real sadness in her eyes, just a mild regret and a loneliness Chloe recognized and knew all to well. She returned the grin, understanding perfectly. You're welcome, she mouthed back, and drank some more herself.

As New Year approached on deafening feet, more and more people began to gather on the street, coats buttoned and collars raised against the cold wind. Lois and Bushwhack unloaded a coil of firecrackers from the latter's truck, and Clark grinned crookedly when he noticed that the Wolf Pack came in quantities of 16,000 as well.

"Oh my fucking god," Chloe muttered, making Lana and Esther laugh. "We're all gonna die."

"At least the ending will be painless," Esther said.

"I wouldn't count on it," Lana said. Clark only raised one eyebrow. Easy for him: he couldn't be harmed. The four of them took a few steps back towards the door while Lois and Bushwhack draped the ten foot long strip out over the street, much to the glee of the local children.

At ten seconds to twelve Lois lit the fuse, and when they all shouted 'Happy New Year' to each other, all they heard was twenty pounds of gunpowder going up in pungent smoke. Nevertheless, when Clark hugged her and whispered in her ear, "Are you happy, Chloe? Really? Does he make you happy?" she heard every word, and when she whispered back, "Yes. Yes, I think I am, and yes, he does," she knew even his super sensitive ears had survived the Wolf pack when he smiled and said, "Good. In that case…Happy New Year, Chloe."

At exactly one-thirty Chloe ran into the ground floor entrance of the penthouse. "Mister Luthor in yet?" she called to the man behind the counter who was watching the firecracker violence outside with wistful pyromaniac appreciation. This was the nice one, not the one who wouldn't warm up to wattage.

"Yes, Miss Sullivan," he replied. "He just came in a few minutes ago. Please go right on ahead."

"Thanks!" she beamed. "Happy New Year!"

"Happy New Year to you too, Miss," he said, smiling warmly before his eyes were drawn back to the streets when a particularly loud rocket went off.

Chloe dove into the elevator, daringly depositing her gum into the gleaming dustbin in front of it. There was something simultaneously highly exciting as well as comfortably ordinary to ride all the way up to the top and then stick the key into the keyhole and open the door to Lex's house.

He was standing in the hallway, his back leaning against a strip of uncovered wall, smiling as she closed the door behind her. He had worn a tux but had disposed of the jacket and the tie and had loosened the upper two buttons of his shirt, which somehow gave him the impression of being ruffled. Chloe was awed someone without any hair could pull of 'ruffled' simply by undoing a few buttons, wearing a tux.

"Hey," said Chloe. Her voice was a little hoarse from shouting over the firecrackers.

"Hey," he replied, voice as smooth as whiskey. He took a step towards her

—and his eyes widened and his arms started milling, and then his legs buckled and he fell to his knees at her feet like a groupie in front of Elvis.

"Owww!! Fuck!" Pain flashed over his face, and then he began to laugh even as he frantically tried to push himself back to his feet.

Chloe hastily squatted down next to him, torn between amusement and concern. "Are you alright?" She was somewhat reassured by the fact that he was still laughing, but as he kept failing to stand up she felt a twinge of worry. "What is it? Are you hurt?" One week. It was only one week since he'd been shot. On the other hand…it was New Year. "Are you drunk?"

"No!" Lex protested. "Well, maybe a little. I've just been standing for too long. It's…ow. Fuck, I can't get up. My knees have frozen up."

Chloe put her arms around his chest, both to hug and preparing to heave. "Does it hurt? Shall I pull you up?"

He shot her a crooked smile. "Let me sit back for a bit first, ok? I'm way too heavy for you to lug around."

"I wasn't planning on lugging you around. Are you sure you're alright?" She sat down next to him with her back against an ornately carved mahogany chest, searching for signs of injury, but while he was a little pale, it did not seem worse than before, and if he was in pain it could not be very bad, because he stared at his knees with a mocking leer. She noted that the stitches and the band aid on his temple were gone, leaving a smooth, pink scar that seemed incongruously small for the horrid gash that had been there only a few days ago.

Lex stretched out his legs, grimacing, then let his head roll back on his neck before looking at her and smiling that slow, lazy smile. "At the moment I'm just pissed I can't carry you off to bed."

Lex's priorities were so wonderfully simple.

"Mmm," she nodded, taking careful stock of the hallway. "The floor here lacks the luster of silk sheets."

"Not to mention the comfort."

"You're such a pampered brat, Lex. Don't tell me you've never done it on the bare floor." As if any floor with this kind of carpet could ever be called bare.

Lex's smile broadened. "Oh," he said airily, "yeah, floors. Stone, wood, carpet, tiles, linoleum, hell, I've done it all. Carpet-burn sucks and I really wouldn't recommend…" He only fell silent when Chloe kissed him.

"Shut up, will you?" she chided him gently. He tasted like champagne and something sweet and cinamonny. She doubted it had been anything as mundane as home-made and half-burnt pineapple beignets.

"Mmm…" Lex murmured back. He combed his fingers through her hair, pulling it down from its loose pony tail. "You smell like smoke. Did you light any fireworks?"

"Are you kidding?" She held out her hands. "I earn my life with these fingers, I'm not risking blowing them off for a few seconds of noisy fun. No, one of Lois' whacked-off friends brought a truckfull of thousand counters. They're probably still banging away."

Lex chuckled. "You know, Chloe…the point of fireworks is NOT to blow your fingers off…"

"So why don't I smell any smoke on you, apart from the cigarette kind? Didn't you have any rockets or…or…Bengalese fountains at your nice LuthorCorp party?"

Lex snorted delicately. "People like me can't be bothered with the delights of the common people," he said, voice dripping irony. "We watched from the square, at a safe distance."

"How delightfully boring."

"Oh yes."

"No, I meant you."

"Sorry," said Lex, and kissed her until she thought he wasn't boring anymore. "Happy New Year." He leaned his forehead against hers and closed his eyes, contentment radiating off of him despite their awkward position on the floor.

"Happy New Year," Chloe whispered back. She laced her fingers behind his smooth head, trailing her thumbs over the shells of his ears in a strange but nevertheless loving caress. As she closed her eyes, the particles of smoke that must have gathered there made them burn, causing her to blink, pull back and rub her eyes.

Lex cupped her cheek with one warm hand. "Something wrong?"

"No," Chloe smiled, staring ruefully at a stripe of make-up on her hand. The familiar bite of mascara applied inter-ocularly added itself to the general discomfort of her eyes. "It's just the smoke. I feel like a smoked herring. It's making my eyes sting."

"So go wash up," Lex suggested. "I'll just…kind of sit around until you come back to pull me up."

Chloe grinned. "Wouldn't you rather sit around on the bed?" She scrambled to her feet and held out her hand. "I can dump you there right now, and then at least you can rid yourself of all those ridiculous clothes…"

"Ridiculous?" Lex asked, mystified.

"…and start warming the bed," Chloe went on glibly. "But I'm warning you, Mister Luthor, if you fall asleep before I get back I will be severely displeased."

Lex clasped her hand. "I wouldn't dream of it. One of these days I'm actually going to succeed in staying awake longer than you. Might as well be today." He grunted when Chloe yanked at his arm, and she belatedly realized that it was his right, but since he did not comment on it she did not volunteer any apologies. Between her and the chest and the wall they managed to get Lex standing again, more wobbly than ever in any shower, but more or less balanced. "Would you like some champagne? Or anything else?"

She repressed a hiccup. "No thanks. I'll just drink some water. I'm still stuffed with Lois' baking experiments—can't call them anything else, really. And we had plenty of champagne, too. Not the kind you probably had, though," she chuckled.

"I doubt it, no," Lex said with a faint arch of his eyebrows. He stumbled towards the number one bedroom. Chloe sailed into the bathroom, and of course frightened herself half to death with her own reflection.

"So did you go and visit your kids?" she asked sleepily, some time later.

Lex rumbled a wordless yet affirmative reply into her hair.

"How were they?"

"As well as could be expected." He pushed his nose against the back of her head—doubtlessly inhaling a dizzying amount of smoke. It probably reminded him of his rebel years of cannabis and coke; he quite seemed to like nuzzling her hair. "Hyper about New Year. They were happy knowing they'd have a good view of the city and the fireworks tonight—although most will probably sleep through it. I couldn't stay long, it was almost visiting hour."

"Ah…And Valerie?" Now why on earth did she ask that? She really, really didn't know WHY she would ask such a thing. As if she CARED about the precious Miss Decan.

"Didn't see her," Lex murmured, blowing warm air behind her ear and kissing her there. It sent small shivers down her spine. "I think she was in a meeting. Not that I don't think it's adorable, but you really don't need to be jealous of Valerie Decan."

"I'm not jealous."

He laughed. "Of course not, how stupid of me to think so."

Chloe balked. So fine, she was a jealous bitch, but he didn't have to take such obvious PLEASURE in it. It wasn't as if he didn't have any shortcomings.

Feeling her stiffen in a full body sulk, Lex laughed again, wrapped his arms more securely around her and went back to inhaling her hair. Talk about envy. No flowing locks for this Luthor. "And how was your day?" he asked. "Filled with pressing news and exciting features?"

Chloe grumbled. "No. It was boring and it lasted forever. One of the guys in the basement had brought a wii, so I played tennis for a while, but that was about all the excitement I got. I'm sure lots of people were killed or mistreated all over the world, but I can tell you one thing: according to the Daily Planet they can wait until the day after tomorrow."

"That sounds like a first class Metropolitan approach to all the dreadfulness in the world," Lex said dryly. "I'm glad my scientists could be persuaded to disregard the New Year and keep working on their cure."

"The blood of Clark," Chloe murmured, dismissing her jealousy entirely. She closed her eyes, burrowing deeper into the warmth enveloping her. "Farm boy extraordinaire."

"I wonder how he shaves," Lex mused. Chloe made a sound of disgust.

"Lex. Please."

"Sorry. It's just a mild curiosity."

"Right."

"It is! I'm sorry I brought it up." Now he sounded pouty.

Chloe licked her lips, trying unsuccessfully to tongue her smile away. He thought her adorable for being jealous; well, she thought his obsession, while somewhat disturbing, did hold a certain amount of charm as well. Not when he went into mad scientist mode, because then he got scary, but she could still remember him going through her purse and the way he had studied and categorized her lipsticks, with utmost concentration and seriousness…Well, she couldn't help but love that. Lex Holmes, millionaire detective.

"I think he has a very small meteorite in the grip of his razor," she offered.

"Really?" Lex asked, his tone lazy and low, which meant that he appeared barely interested yet was listening with rapt attention.

"I have no idea. Never really thought about it."

"Oh."

_Sorry Lex, my obsession never went that far._ She yawned. It was almost two thirty, and she'd been up since seven fifteen; she was knackered.

"Go to sleep," Lex nudged her. "You can't sleep too late tomorrow morning."

"Hmm? How's that?" she asked, but Lex just kissed her neck.

"You'll see," he said, and with those cryptic words in her ears she fell asleep. Lex could be satisfied. There was no way he could have nodded off before her.

Lex woke up lying in bed as if he'd been dropped upon it from a great height: flat on his stomach with his arms and legs spread out on either side. He took this as a good sign: he hadn't been able to sleep this way ever since Edge used him for target practice. Not belly down, in any case, and not without his right arm curled protectively over his shoulder.

As he sat up, he noticed that Chloe was perched on the very edge of the bed, no doubt pushed there by his own territorial sleeping behavior. _I should probably learn to give other people space as well, _he thought. She was still fast asleep, curled up like a shrimp, one foot peeking out from under the duvet and hanging over the edge. All he could see of her head was a tangled mop of hair, the rest of it was covered by hand, pillow and covers. There was still a faint whiff of gunpowder smoke hanging around her. He loved that smell, even though he couldn't say why.

It was still early, barely eight, and outside it was dark. A few fading stars twinkled unconvincingly in the sky. Few clouds. Good. Lex left the bed and padded to the kitchen. His legs as well had recovered, which was good, because otherwise his plans would fail, and he severely disliked failing.

Before he had left for last night's party he had filled his bread machine and programmed it to start kneading the dough, so all he had to do now was press the button (which he could have set as well, but he liked to keep some measure of control over things, and that included the baking of bread).

When the machine started to hum, he strolled to the bathroom and showered. He still needed to be careful with his shoulder—it was still a hole, even though it was healing. His legs no longer needed bandages or water-repellant strips and could do with square pieces of adhesive gauze; however, Scanlan had suggested he kept them taped in or wear a brace if he was planning on walking for long distances. He'd worn a brace yesterday. That was probably the reason he hadn't collapsed in the middle of the LuthorCorp hall and fallen head-first into the champagne fountain. The hot water warmed his muscles and he was happy to notice that he could bend his knees with relative ease.

Good.

When he came out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam, a faint hint of gray light was glimmering on the glass of the sky scrapers to the east. Lex calculated he had about thirty to forty minutes before every part of his plan was due in place. The question was, should he give Chloe more time to sleep and then hurry her through breakfast, or wake her now and allow her time to go through all those strange little morning rituals all females had? He didn't need her made up, he didn't even need her showered, but she might feel self-conscious if she hadn't, and the plan wouldn't work if she were in any way uncomfortable.

In the end he gave her ten more minutes of sleep while he put plates and cutlery, butter and jam on a tray, made coffee and waited until the bread machine spat out a dozen of steaming buns. Then he made sure that the curtains were drawn in his living room without even a sliver of sky showing and lit the hearth, went back to the kitchen to pick up his tray and went to wake her up.

"You have," Lex said, checking his watch, "exactly nine minutes left to shower."

Chloe, mouth crammed full with the godliest bread she'd ever eaten, looked up from her plate and made an enquiring noise. _Ghuh?_ She swallowed. "Ghuh?"

"If, of course, you'd want to take a shower," Lex added. He sat on the bed in nothing but his boxer shorts, legs loosely crossed and seemingly oblivious to the room's cool temperature.

"Why," Chloe asked, tucking the duvet more securely around her. "Are we going somewhere?"

"Not really. But we do have an appointment."

"We do?"

"Yes."

"What kind of appointment?"

"The kind that starts in…eight minutes."

"Why so _early_?" she groaned, but he just smiled, wide awake and enjoying his little secret way too much. "Oh, ok." With a big sigh and a shiver she slid out of bed, repressing the urge to drape the covers around her. In movies women always carried the whole bedding around whenever they got out of bed, but somehow she thought it was unpractical. For one, Lex was sitting on top of the duvet and she doubted she was strong enough to pull it from underneath him. Second, there was that pot of coffee…

Yawning, mildly annoyed but too well-fed to be miffed she ducked under the shower for a quick cat wash, brushed her teeth and applied one of Lex's wide range of colognes, aftershaves and deodorants since she had forgotten to bring her own. The deodorant she picked out (something Italian) smelled rather sharp on her, and was something she had most certainly never smelled on Lex. Then again, he never seemed to smell the same. Clean, mostly. With some inoffensive hint of scent she usually chalked up to aftershave.

He doesn't even shave. Why should he use aftershave?

When she came out of the bathroom, dressed in the stolen dressing gown, Lex was just squatting in front of the hearth in the living room, poking it to life. The firelight cast a warm light on his face and chest, painting the rest of him in white and shadow-gray, emphasizing the darkness of the room. She entered on silent feet, wondering what he was up to. There was a funny glitter in his eyes she wasn't entirely sure she trusted.

But as he got up and kissed her, turning her around in the process, there was nothing she could think he could possibly do she wouldn't like. "So," she asked when he finally released her, "what appointment were you talking about?"

"An appointment with the skyline," Lex replied. He clicked a button on a tiny remote control, and behind her the curtains parted with a moneyed swish. "Turn around," he said, and she did, facing those gorgeous windows of his.

Sunrise displayed itself like a whore, stretching out and draping herself over Metropolis. The sun licked the skyline, caressed the sides of the sky scrapers and lovingly wrapped itself around a single copper-plated church roof. Golden, pink and vivid orange streams of light reached across the sky.

Chloe pressed her palms against the glass, entranced by the gilded, sleeping city. Then Lex gave her a push, a hard one, and she slammed against the glass, feeling it cold against the bare skin of her thigh and neckline. Lex's body pressed against her back, pinning her against the window, warm and giving compared to the glass.

"Is this what you had in mind?" he asked, nipping her neck as he spread his hands over hers—again emphasizing the cold on one side and the warmth on the other. Desire spread through her lower belly like a hot wave.

"Something like this, yeah," she breathed. Where her cheek touched the glass it misted over.

"Interesting fetish you have there, Sullivan," he murmured, laughter bubbling in the back of his throat. But he _liked_ this little fetish of hers, that was obvious. "You know," he said conversationally while he brought both of her hands together over her head and captured her wrists with his left hand, "I don't think I've ever done it this way before. So forgive me for improvising." He gave her an inch of space, just enough to slip his free hand into her bathrobe, then shoved her against the window again in a full body-to-body-press. Only now he had one arm in front of her to pull her harder against him; his hand first traveled up, cupped her breast and her nipples just _ached_ when he circled one, gave it a little flick with his fingers, and she squirmed. "Hmm…"

"What 'hmm'?" she started to ask, but then he pushed the bathrobe down her shoulder and it was so big it fell open all the way to her waist, where the knot that kept it secured was quickly slipping as well.

"It must be the glass," he mused, and leaned against her back. She gave a breathless squeal as hot, sensitive skin came into contact with icy smoothness. Goose bumps broke out over her entire body. Her right breast was still covered, but now he stroked his fingers over that one as well, and how could she ever have gotten the impression that he was cool? It was as if she had a radiator at her back.

A by now very hard radiator.

"Lex…" she whined, but he kissed her neck and wouldn't be hurried. Lex Luthor took his time considering his improvising techniques.

His hand slid down her ribs to her belly, coincidentally or maybe not so coincidentally loosening the robe completely, drew her closer against him still.

"So, Chloe" he whispered, something raw in his voice, and her stomach tightened, "how do you like the view?"

Try as she might, Chloe couldn't focus on the skyline. She gasped as two, three fingers slipped inside of her—literally slipped; she was so wet it was almost embarrassing—and cried out as he _lifted_ her, or at least _shifted_ her that way, and that soft cry abruptly ended the foreplay. Lex ripped off her robe, shook off whatever he was wearing himself and rammed into her, slamming her against the window so hard the glass rattled in its frame.

She'd wanted window sex? She was getting window sex. He squashed her against the glass like a fly, and it was cold and hard and pretty damn awkward but Christ, it turned her on so much she came after his second thrust, but she didn't expect him to stop, and he didn't. He just rode out the clench of her body, his fingers in turn clenching hard around her wrists, still pinned above her head, slowed down until she'd stopped mewling and then recommenced with unwavering vigor.

And now, while her body was slowly building up to another orgasm, she did drink in the view, the surroundings, the whole situation. The sun, rising crimson and flat as it only did in the winter, cast Metropolis in a fiery light and shone bright red through her splayed fingers. Her hands made squeaky noises as they slipped against the glass. Condensation spread with every panted out exhalation and diminished with every gasped-in breath, and her hair made strange patterns in it as it trailed against the glass. She was acutely aware of the smooth, warm body wrapped around hers, and of both the lingering weakness that made its muscles quiver, and the strength that kept it going nevertheless.

It didn't occur to her to be afraid that he'd hurt himself again. He wouldn't appreciate her worrying over trivial things like that, and besides that, she was enjoying herself far too much to actually care. He really was very good at this, improvising or no—even though he still didn't make a sound and she usually preferred her lovers (a rather euphemistic term, since she'd only had about three) to make a little noise to show they were having a good time. Then again, the slapping sound of flesh on flesh, the clutch of his fingers, the forehead occasionally resting against her back and mainly the way he just _went on_ more or less proved Lex was just fine the way he was.

_Happy New Year!_ she chanted to herself, moaning when he stroked just like that, just the right way, just quickly enough with just enough pressure to make black stars explode all over the flaming sky. _God, yes, happy new year, and new day, God, never stop, don't stop, don't stop, don't stop doing that…_

And just as she was teetering on the edge, just before falling over, Lex murmured in her ear, "Do you know that the FBI is staking out in the building on the other side? I've a feeling they've been keeping an eye on this apartment for quite some time. With binoculars."

"WHAT?" she started to screech, but then he angled up and _thrust_, and it came out as "Wha-ah-ahh-aaaahhhh!!" as she went over again. Through her own moans and the squeak of her hands slipping on the glass, she thought she could hear Lex murmur 'Option twelve, available once more', but that must have been her imagination.

The moment her body was under her control again she rounded up on him, grabbed his arm and pushed him hard against the window in her stead.

Lex squirmed. "Cold!"

"Is that true?" Chloe asked angrily, pinning him in place with her hands on his chest. "Are they really…" and then she relaxed, because no one could look that wicked and not be lying.

"They might be," he said innocently. "Why?

"Because then I'd rather they see your tight little white ass than my full frontal nudity."

"They'd probably much rather see your full frontal nudity than my white ass."

"You forgot tight and little," Chloe said.

Lex smirked. "No self-respecting man would ever describe his own ass as being tight and little," he said. "I do value my masculinity more than that." He looked unsatisfactorily comfortable pressed against the glass.

Chloe scowled. No man with an erection like that should look this at ease pinned against his own windows by his girlfriend. "You haven't come yet," she said, more to make a statement than to point his attention to that fact. She was sure he was quite aware of the state of his body.

"No," Lex agreed.

"I could of course make you turn around and then make you batch all over the window."

After all their conversations she really should know better than to try and play verbal I dare you/gross-out games with Lex.

"_Batch_?" he repeated, amusement making his eyes crinkle. And as Chloe rolled her eyes, "Yeah, you probably could. Make me 'batch' all over the window." He chuckled. "I doubt my cleaning lady would approve, though."

"You'd leave it for the cleaning lady??"

"But of course," Lex said unperturbedly. "That's what I hire her for, isn't it? I can just picture it, me sitting on that couch reading the paper, she coming in with her little bucket and mop…"

Chloe could picture it right along with him, and the mental image made her groan with embarrassment.

"Good god. Would you? I mean seriously, would you do such a thing?"

"Depends. Are you daring me to?"

She was tempted to say yes. Lex KNEW she was tempted, and tried to tempt her to say yes. But the mental image of the cleaning lady scrubbing the window was enough to make her blush to the roots of her hair, so she shook her head, because damn it, he WOULD do it. And redo it, if she were to wipe it off. Just to make a point.

"No."

He exhaled. "Oh, good. I don't think I'd be able to live that down."

Aggravation reasserted itself. She thwacked him on the chest. "You bastard!" But that grin was so childishly gleeful that she couldn't help kissing him. It was hard to imagine that this was the same man who inspired another man to kill him, that he was a genius who ran a multi-billion dollar company, that this _moronic_ goofball had at one time scared her so much simply by looking at her that she'd almost turned and fled…but he was. Really, he was so much more of a riddle—so much more bloody _fascinating_!—than Clark that she could hardly believe it had taken her so long to get over the alien. Telling him she loved him seemed to make him twitchy, so she kept her mouth shut and simply leaned against him, one side of her face pressed against his chest, the rest of her body keeping him nicely stuck to the window.

Loving vengeance.

He was beginning to shiver a little.

And he was still hard.

Life was hard for insane billionaires...

"Um…" said Lex with a sway of his hips and a poke into her stomach, "are you going to help me out here or am I going to have to do it myself?"

"What would you do if I told you to do it yourself?" she murmured, bringing her hands down from his shoulders and stroking along his sides until they came to rest on the slightly protruding bones of his hips.

"Mmm. Probably do it myself?"

Chloe trailed her fingers over his stomach until she bumped into his erection and softly wrapped her fingers around it. It jumped into her hand, and she smiled. She tilted her head up and wondered how long he could keep his face as passive as it was now.

"Fast or slow?" She traced the tips of her fingers from root to tip, circling the slit at the tip and rubbing back down.

Lex swallowed, but the easy smile never wavered. "Fast, I'd think," he said.

"I see. Not like this, then."

"No. Faster."

"Like this?"

And he was STILL maintaining that maddening in-control smile, although his eyes had darkened almost to black and the shiver from the window had become a light tremble.

"Faster."

She rubbed faster, though still barely skimming his flesh with her fingers. Still the frustration she was hoping for did not surface. On the contrary, he regarded her with a triumphant kind of amusement. He thought he was doing well. Sucker.

"Chloe, you're not getting me anywhere."

"No? How about this?"

Despite himself he couldn't hold in a gasp of pleasure when she finally gripped him hard and started jerking him off in earnest. His eyes drifted closed, but he opened them with a snap. "Yeah, that's…better."

"Really? That's nice. Why don't you tell me how you'd continue?"

"I don't think talking dirty to m-myself would accomplish much," Lex said, aiming for blithe and only managing breathy.

Chloe grinned, slowing down to a rhythm that was easier on her wrist. He made a tiny protesting sound deep in his throat. "This isn't about talking dirty, it's all about instructions. _You're_ the depraved nouveau riche playboy, _I'm_ just the innocent reporter. I have no clue how to pleasure someone as jaded as you."

"Christ," Lex moaned. "You make me sound like a sixty-year-old Marquis de Sade. Just keep doing that…a little faster…"

"You've lost your smile, Lex."

"Fuck my smile," he panted.

"Would if I could," Chloe quipped, and apparently that was the last straw.

"Ok, back against the window you go," he said, spun her around and smacked her into the glass once more. He leaned to one side and presently she heard the familiar crackle of Durex finding a new home (where the HELL had he found that one?) and the next moment he was inside her again. "Let's conclude this in a mutually satisfactory manner, shall we?"

Chloe smirked against the glass. "Why, sure, Mister Luthor. Where do I sign, and does it include other services rendered?" She squeaked as he all but crushed her.

"No," Lex purred in her ear. "This is basic services only. Now shut the hell up before you drive me to extremes."

Chloe was deathly curious as to what 'extremes' she could drive Lex to, but unfortunately she was not to find out—not now, anyway. Being thoroughly taken against the windows of Lex's gorgeous residence with the glass chilling her skin and the sunrise warming her face kind of made it impossible to voice anything but gasps and moans of pleasure and wordless pleas for more.

Then again, this was only the first day of the new year. She was sure there would be other opportunities.

Half an hour later she was sprawled bonelessly over the sofa, satiated and happy and fetish-satisfied, too lazy and really too tired to do more than just lie there and watch the clouds move across the sky. She was wearing her own jeans but one of Lex's sweaters because her own stank of cigarette smoke and greasy baking smells. It was far too big for her but felt lovely and soft, and at least it smelled of detergent instead of Lois' apartment.

Lex sat at the table, checking his email. Chinese New Year was still some time away, and his business continued. After a few minutes he gave a somewhat evil-sounding chuckle.

"Hmm?" Chloe inquired.

"Oh, nothing," Lex replied. "Mister Wong sent me the dates of my stay in Xue Dong. In English. It's…relieving to find out that his English is infinitely worse than my Chinese tenses." He turned towards her, closed his laptop. "You know what's so nice about Mister Wong—who is a backstabbing bastard in any other aspect? He pronounces my name as 'Rex'. 'Rex Ruthor'. He doesn't seem to have a problem with the r, but he can't say ls."

She laughed. "I bet you like that. Rex."

"I do. It fills me with superior pleasure. Now it turns out he can't distinguish the letters either. Stupid prick."

Somehow, Chloe got the feeling Mister Wong had once or twice commented on Lex's pronunciation or grammar, and was now getting a piece of his own.

"When are you going? To China, I mean?"

"The 21st of January." He leaned back in his chair. "Why don't you come with me? I'll only be going for a week or so, and it'd be a great chance for you to see China—as far as I know you're the only one of our little group who hasn't ever been there." A hint of sarcasm briefly colored his voice, but disappeared almost immediately. "I'm sure you'd like it. And I most certainly would like it if you decided to come along."

_China…_He was right, she'd never been to China. "I could go with you?"

"I'd like nothing better," said Lex. "And it wouldn't be anything like a Luthor New Year's Party, I assure you."

Chloe blushed. She could have been more graceful in declining that invitation. But the blush was partly born of excitement too. China! "I have to see if I can manipulate Perry," she said, a plan already taking form in her head. "Make him believe it's work-related."

"So you'll come along?" Lex asked.

"Yes," she said. "I mean, I want to. I will. Just…give me some time to arrange things, ok?"

Lex smiled. "Of course," he said, already certain of her decision—as was she, no matter what she said. "Take all the time you need. Twenty days should be more than enough time to stage-manage that loud-mouthed boss of yours, isn't it?"

"Oh yeah," Chloe said, and burrowed deeper into the pillows of the couch. "More than enough."

TBC

Conventional sex is really nothing for me 

Ok, it could end here. It's a perfectly fine ending. Ok, there are a couple of things that haven't been explained, but it COULD end here. It won't, of course, but if you want this story to end with everybody happy and positive, you might want to stop here. Because now starts the mental roller coaster (rubs hands in sadistic glee).


	25. Chapter 25

giggle

giggle

Lex: (conversationally) So Clark, how DO you shave?

Clark: Um. (mumbles) Heat vision.

Lex: What? Speak up.

Clark: Heat vision. And an, um, mirror.

Lex: splod

I had no reviews for the last chapter, so I don't have anyone to thank either :P

Calm before the storm:

Twenty-five: in which Edge's plans with Chloe's purse become clear

It was the second of January and Chloe Sullivan was getting outraged glances from her fellow colleagues as she sat at her desk, humming as she filed through a toweringly stacked in-tray.

"Ok," Katie Johansson finally said, as Chloe burst into spontaneous song while sorting through a pile of transcribed lectures on SARS, "who is he, and what did you two do?"

"Huh?" She didn't really like Katie. She was tall, thin, pretty and persistent in an obtuse way Katie herself thought made her look professional, but which everybody else experienced as insensitive. As a matter of fact she was rather like Lois, but while Lois could be tactless, she wasn't mean, and Katie most definitely was. No overflowing D-cup could hide the fact that she was a nasty bitch, and as a result even the most desperate males of the department refused to have anything to do with her. Sometimes Chloe felt sorry for her; most of the time she tried to avoid her. Usually, this was easily accomplished since Katie was an anchor and seldom present. Today she was impossible to ignore.

"They guy who painted the 'I got some cock' sign on your forehead," Katie said rudely. "Who was it? Lex bloody Luthor? Don't tell me you're actually screwing him."

"You're totally right," Chloe said amiably, going back to her work. "I'm not telling you." Her singing mood had vanished, but she still hummed to herself, taking occasional sips of coffee while she made notes in the margin with a red pen.

Unfortunately, Katie was less interested in work than in gossip—which, to be true, _was_ closely related—and leaned against Chloe's (still absent) neighbor's desk, studying her from behind long, curled lashes.

"What?" Chloe asked without looking up. "Is there something on my face? Beside the 'I got some cock' sign, of course?"

"_Are_ you screwing him?"

"Oh yeah, big time. Man's out of the hospital for two days after sustaining major injuries…"

"During which you were present," Katie interjected.

"Uhuh. I'm sure he loves being reminded of the times we shared in the forest. You can't believe what a turn-on it is to sit knee-deep in a man's blood. Man, I get hot even thinking about it."

"So you aren't doing him?"

Chloe rolled her eyes. People like Katie Johansson were the reason she was so reluctant to confess she was seeing him. They took out every shred of romance and love and turned it into a relationship built on lust, greed and mutual exploitation. If she said 'Yup, I'm screwing Lex and wow, he's good at it!' there was no way Katie would ever believe it was because Chloe sincerely loved the guy. She shivered imagining Katie forcing an interview.

"No, Katie, I'm trying to WORK. So could you please go away and stick your nose in someone else's business?"

"Oh come one! Why won't you tell me? I swear I won't tell anyone."

"You wouldn't have to," the young man sitting two desks to the right of Chloe said, poking his head up. "Since we're in a public office and anything. Sod off, Katie, I have heaps to do. If you want to know, I cheated on my wife and had Chloe on Perry's desk just when the clock struck twelve last night."

"I can vouch for that," the mail room girl, Anna Boleyn (not related to the British queen) spoke up. She put another couple of envelopes in Chloe's in-tray. "I was there, too."

"Me too," the man against whose desk Katie was leaning added while he hung his jacket over the back of his chair. "I didn't cheat, though. Brought my wife right along. Becky loves threesomes."

Katie flung up her hands. "Ok, I get it. You don't need to make such a big deal out of it." She stomped off, even forgetting to sway her hips in her anger.

The others grinned. "Thanks, I guess," Chloe said. "Jeez, Chuck, I never knew you wanted me so badly."

Chuck had been married for exactly three weeks now and still seemed sun-struck with happiness about said situation. "It isn't you I'm fantasizing about," he deadpanned. "It's Perry's desk. I can't wait to smuggle Diane in one night and watch her writhe on all those files—I mean, really, the thought of that ash tray of his alone is enough to make me embarrass myself."

"Yes, I see the appeal," Anna snorted. She handed Chuck a stack of envelopes. "And here's your share for the new year. And these are for Gary. Gary, do you want them in your tray or shall I throw them into the trash can straight away?"

"Damn you, woman! Give me the chance to sit down, will you?"

"I just don't want to cause an avalanche. I've never seen such an amazing tower of unopened and unread mail. It's extraordinary! There must be stuff lying there from June last year! Have you ever considered calling World Records?"

As the usual office bickering and teasing continued around her, Chloe went back to her own mail. At the beginning of the year the mail always screwed up because of the Christmas mail and the holidays, so while her email inbox was relatively empty, the hardcopy stuff was overwhelming. She picked up a large yellow envelope, checking for a sender name. There was none. The only thing on the label was her name, Ms. C. Sullivan, and the P.O. Box of the Daily Planet. Nothing official, then. When she tilted the envelop to rip open the side, something inside of it shifted.

Hm. It felt like a key.

She opened the envelop and took out the simple sheet of white paper, interrupting herself to click her computer through MSN start up. Several of her contacts were only available by chat. "So," she murmured to herself as she unfolded the letter, "what have we got here, then? More New Year wishes? A whistleblower's requiem? A new..." She stopped. The letter was typed and printed in a font that resembled ordinary handwriting.

_Miss Sullivan,_

_I trust you have had a pleasant New Year. However, there is work to be_

_done and therefore I am sending you this letter. Why a letter, I hear_

_you think. The answer is simple: there are some things one cannot send_

_by mail and one of them is the key you will find enclosed with this_

_note._

_If you were to have this letter investigated by the police, they would_

_tell you that it contains two sets of fingerprints; on the letter my_

_own which, I dare say, have been in great demand with the local police_

_force these days. On the envelop you will find my prints again, and the prints of_

_the kind old lady living in Baltimore Junction, House number 6, who so_

_readily agreed to post this letter for a passing stranger on the 31st of _

_December. If you feel the need to have her checked out, please ask the police to be_

_polite, since she is a friendly old lady who only acted out of the_

_goodness of her heart._

_By now you have probably taken out the key._

(Chloe had, and she almost crushed the paper in her suddenly sweaty fingers. Edge predicted her actions so accurately she didn't know whether to be scared or outraged.)

_It is, as you can see, a key to a locker. The locker in question can_

_be found at the south Met Station, on the right side of the central_

_hall. You may have noted that the key does not have a number, but you_

_can easily find out what it is: the number of the locker corresponds_

_with the last three numbers on the verification tag in your purse._

_In this locker you will find the lead to proof of several of LuthorCorp's illegal_

_deals and projects, including print-outs of links and documents I gave_

_to you but were no longer in existence. Of course, whether you go and_

_collect these documents is entirely up to you. There is nothing I can_

_do to force you. However, if you want to find out the truth, you now_

_have the key to access it._

_Yours,_

_Martin Edge_

She wanted to rip the paper apart, tear it to shreds, squeeze it to papier mache in the dregs of her coffee cup. That bastard! That insufferable son of a bitch! Her hands clenched and made the paper crackle...But she didn't tear it. She did not even fold it. She stared at the neatly printed lines and tried to make herself feel only anger and no curiosity.

But once again, Edge had drawn her in, playing on her weaknesses: the thrill of some kind of game and the everlasting desire to FIND OUT about the horrors in the basement of LuthorCorp.

She loved Lex—Did she? Yes, she did. A lot, actually. She couldn't even imagine not being with him anymore. If there had ever been anything personal to her desire to bring LuthorCorp down, it was long gone, and she didn't want to have anything to do with Edge and his private vendetta with Lex.

_I should take this to the police._ But what good would that do? Produce two sets of fingerprints, the most important of which was already known. And…She picked up her bag and looked inside. There, just above the zipper of an internal pocket a small incongruous red label with the stylized logo of the bag's manufacturer (Bailiz&Harriet) stuck out of a seam. She had studied that label several times, but it had always been there and it had not been tampered with. No one HAD tampered with it. She folded it and looked on the other side. The bag's manufacturer's number was 28319.

319.

Locker 319.

Locker 319 held all the secrets to bringing down LuthorCorp.

LuthorCorp and _Lex_.

"No." She put the letter back in the envelop, stuffed the key inside as well and crammed the whole of it into the lowest drawer of her desk. "I have better things to do." Forcefully putting the letter out of her mind, she went back to her work. Two hours later she could almost convince herself that she had forgotten all about Edge's little note.

The first week of the new year Chloe saw Lex only in the late evening since his PR manager had booked him full almost from daybreak to dinner. For Chloe as well there was a lot of catching up to do at work, so they only met up after dinner, once FOR dinner, screwed like bunnies, fell asleep in a coil and woke up alone—at least, Chloe woke up alone because Lex usually got up at six and left before the alarm clock went off at seven fifteen. The first two days Chloe felt guilty about sleeping soundly through any and all morning rituals Lex performed, but after a while even that became a routine.

Lex didn't need an alarm clock. He always opened his eyes at exactly six in the morning, no matter at what time he went to sleep, and was always immediately ready to start the day. Where Chloe needed lakes of caffeine to pull her out of post-sleep zombeism, Lex's body apparently produced its own stimulating substances. Neither did he need time to shed the stupidity brought on by sleep (Chloe was notoriously dumb when she'd just woken up, barely capable of intelligent conversation). Once she'd woken up at six ten because he was having a merry chat with one of his business colleagues…in Russian.

It was at this moment that she decided that Lex, unlike what everybody thought, was an alien as well. His father had been brainwashed into thinking he'd once had a redheaded son, because really, Lex's name was Al-Lex'nDr and he came from a neighboring colony of Krypton. No one who wasn't Russian and who had only been awake for a couple of minutes should be able to make jokes in Russian. It was freaky.

What was also freaky was how much he thrived on working. Sure, Chloe loved her job, and she'd spent many evenings poring over yellowed handwritten notes and ancient news papers, but unless there was some kind of mystery to be solved, or a criminal to be apprehended, she was very happy to go home in the evening.

But Lex, she got the feeling, made little distinction between work and spare time. Because of some fluke of nature he could take as much pleasure in reading the minutes of a meeting as she took in reading a good novel. Figuring out a way to finance a failing company in order to keep it out of the hands of the opposition was something he enjoyed, up to the point that he whistled a horrible tuneless melody all the while he was working.

Once she had shown up while he was almost hidden behind a stack of files.

"Sit down, have a drink," he'd said. "I'll be done in half an hour."

"Right," she'd said, but damned if he hadn't worked through it—and probably meticulously _well_—in twenty-seven minutes. Out of curiosity she paged through one of those files sometime later. She couldn't make head nor tails of it.

Being confronted with Lex's brilliance always made her feel a bit uncomfortable. She wasn't stupid by any means herself, but it was very easy to forget how scarily smart Lex was—despite the fact that the A. in A. Luthor stood for Arrogance. Somehow, he always managed to brag about how fucking intelligent he was without making her feel stupid (on the contrary, whenever he donned that superior smirk she felt like rolling her eyes), but reading through this stuff drove it home a hell of a lot more efficiently. Perhaps that was because there was always a touch of cynicism in his voice when he spoke about his brain power, as if there were downs as well as ups to being this smart.

Maybe there were, Chloe wouldn't know. She was pretty much satisfied with her own gray cells, but she couldn't image there was anything negative about being able to speak 14 languages and learn a new one in the span of a few weeks. Maybe one became bored sooner, or fed up with silly movies with moronic plots. Or maybe one started to ask more of one's own capacities. Lex picked up new things with envy-inspiring ease, but he was by no means perfect, and he could become terribly chagrined when he wanted to learn something and wasn't able to so.

Like whistling.

Thankfully, Lex did not often give her the chance to ponder the lowliness of her IQ compared to his. As long as he kept his work-related files locked away, kissed her a couple of times and made goofy comments on shows on TV, she had no trouble at all ignoring the fact that he was a genius.

It was much more difficult ignoring the envelope tucked away in her desk at the Planet.

She did manage to forget about Edge's hidden treasure for the full two glorious days she spent with Lex in Paris.

"If you want to go, that is," he said with a mocking little smile while they were smashing lobsters hidden in the back of the quaintest little restaurant.

"If I WANT to go??" she asked, and brought down her hammer so hard the lobster splattered all over the table. "Of course I want to go!"

Lex removed a piece of shell from his cheek. "I'd appreciate it if you'd handle that thing a trifle more carefully," he said dryly. "But if we're to go I suggest we go this weekend. Then it won't be so dreadfully crowded. Unless you have other plans…?"

"Plans that take precedence over going to Paris?" Chloe snorted. "Hardly. I'd love to go."

"Would you like to bring someone? Lois?"

She was sure he didn't mean it but there was something leery about the way he pronounced her cousin's name, as if the L wouldn't leave his mouth and stuck to his tongue. She grinned. "Nah. I think I'll just force you to do…what's the name of that street again? With all the shops?"

"Avenue Montaigne."

"Yes. You'll just have to bite through it."

Lex raised a cool eyebrow. "I can imagine worse than watching a woman go postal in clothing shops. But are you quite sure? Last time you said…"

"Lex…" She released her hammer and made to put her hand over his, then noticed her hand was sticky with lobster juice and covered in tiny bits of shell and licked her fingers instead. "I'd love to go with just you. Really."

"Good," Lex had said, and the following Friday she skipped up the steps of his small private jet.

It hardly reminded her of an airplane. She'd flown in airplanes before, and her main impressions had always been tiny chairs without leg room, salted peanuts and drinks served in ludicrously small plastic glasses. Lex's plane was spacious inside, and looked more like a hotel room than the inside of a vehicle. It even had two beds in a separate cabin. She tried not to gawk too much; after all, she wasn't a child anymore, and really, Luthor Luxury shouldn't impress her anymore. Nevertheless she found Lex observing her with an amused expression as she looked up from the mini bar (which was HUGE for a mini bar) when a disembodied man's voice announced they were ready for take-off and would they please strap in?

"Satisfied with the surroundings?" Lex asked with an indulging smirk.

"It'll do," she replied, and sank into a plush chair near the window. Lex, she noticed, was sitting closer to the isle, if the gangway between the chairs could be called that. She fastened her seat belt and pressed her nose against the glass when the motors gave their first roar. Lex opened a newspaper. She shot him an exasperated glance. "You don't have to be so bloody blasé about it, you know. I know you fly all the time but how can you ever get tired of taking off?" She felt her lips spread in a smile at the feeling of being pushed into her chair when the plane began to accelerate.

"Blasé?" He looked up from his news paper, still looking utterly comfortable but keeping his eyes averted from the windows. "I'm not blasé about flying."

"Then look at it! It's beautiful."

"I'd rather not, if it's the same to you."

And in the silence that followed his words, spoken so calmly and without any of his usual bravado, Chloe realized that she was a fool; what was more, she was a cold-hearted fool. _He crashed. Way to go, Sullivan, that was a spectacular display of disregarding your loved one's traumatic experiences._

"I'm sorry," she said, and she hardly noticed that beautiful moment when the plane left the ground and ceased being land-bound transport and became airborne. "I hadn't thought…I didn't think…Oh Lex, why didn't you tell me before? You must hate flying!"

"Flying's ok," he said quietly. "It's taking off and landing that makes me just a tiny bit nervous." He gave her a reassuring smile. "Don't worry about it."

"But we could have gone another way, or not all the way to Paris…"

"Don't be absurd." He shook his head and swallowed when they rose abruptly; Chloe swallowed too and her ears popped. "Like you said, I fly all the time; it's the only way to cover large distances quickly. I've just never really taken a liking to it." Indeed, he did not give the impression of actually being scared, it was more something like resignation; she still felt guilty.

"But after you crashed…"

"I crashed my cars too, multiple times," Lex shot back. "I still love driving. I never enjoyed flying. Hated it as a kid. Must be because you have no control over a plane at all, and if you do crash…well…not even Clark Kent can breathe life back into you if you do."

The fasten seat belt light blinked off, and he immediately got up and poured two glasses, one with what was probably scotch and one with what she expected was white wine.

"Well, we're up in the air already and I am pretty much convinced you didn't bribe my pilot to abandon plane and…" He stopped, shook his head again and took a gulp from his glass. "Sorry." He handed her her wine. "To Paris. When you drink that annoying pressure in your ears will disappear."

"To Paris," Chloe toasted, and then she got up and parked herself on his lap. "Are people liable to come in at unexpected moments?"

Lex grinned. He put his drink down on the table next to him and put his hands on her hips. "Not unless I call them."

"Mmm. And how long is this flight going to last again?"

"About twelve hours, I should say."

"That's an awful long time."

"Awful," Lex said, and began to undo the buttons of her blouse. "What are we to do?"

"Scrabble?"

"Window sex is going to be a bit of a problem, although the view would be even more spectacular."

"Will the staff notice if we have sex? I mean, won't they feel the plane bump or something?"

Lex shared some kind of secret with her navel. "Chloe, a plane weighs over three ton. I doubt we're going to be able to rock it—not unless you've brought a drill with you."

"Then let me introduce you to my Tarzan2000 Mr. Bumpy Rotating Power Love Vibrator Machine."

Lex's mouth quivered. "Rotating Power Love Vibrator Machine?"

"It's the latest fashion."

"Mm. Maybe we should play scrabble after all. I'm most curious for the words you'll come up with."

But in the end they just ended up having sex, and Chloe slept for most of the rest of the flight. She even slept amazingly well, and when she stepped off the plane in Paris, she was bouncing with energy.

Lex blinked owlishly against the light and claimed he needed coffee—Chloe was just fine with this since there very seldom was a time she was not in the mood for coffee—she didn't think he had closed his eyes for longer than a minute. She doubted she would have been able to sleep if she'd once been drugged and woken up going down. It didn't seem to bother him much, the lack of sleep. He drank three cups of hideously expensive coffee, devoured three croissants, splashed water in his face and proclaimed himself ready for shopping.

Chloe stuck her arm through his and dashed down the Avenue Montaigne with the same delight she had as a little girl running into Disney World.

L'Avenue Montaigne was a paradise for rich and famous shoppers (although Chloe did not recognize a single famous face). Dior, Chanel, Versace, Gucci, Prada, Valentino. Names Chloe only knew from the dresses the people she wrote about wore to balls and openings. She had never seen so many fur coats—real fur coats, the ones animals died for—in her life. At first the huge boutiques cowed her a little, as did the beautiful women in their dead stylish animals, but Lex simply pushed her through the glass doors of the nearest store, pointed at something on a mannequin and said, "Why don't you try that on?" and it was amazing how quickly she lost her timidity.

Lex patiently accompanied Chloe while she ran one shop in and out of the other, only speaking up when she hesitated because of the price.

"Just buy it already," he'd say with a little shrug. "If you want it, you can have it."

"But 200 euro for this slip of silk…it's outrageous! I mean, it's gorgeous, but…How many dollars is that? 300 or something?"

"Something like that." Lex sounded bored. "It looks good on you, so buy it. I insist. What's more, I _promised_. Buy it. You haven't even reached 2000 yet, and it's almost 2, so you'd better stop dawdling."

"2000…" She stared, aghast, at the bags she had so far collected.

"That's exactly 5 of the latest car I ordered," Lex mused. "And not even 0,5 of the LeXCorp Christmas donation to charity this year." He grinned, but the mischievous glint in his eyes somehow made him look boyishly charming instead of insufferably snobbish. "You're a delightfully cheap date, Chloe."

So Chloe bought clothes worth half her monthly salary she was SURE she would spill chocolate on the very first time she wore them while Lex hung over chairs and against walls, observing her with that mixture of amusement and wariness men automatically adopted whenever they went out with women who had clothes on their mind. If she fitted something he thought hideous, a comical grimace twisted his mouth, and most of the time Chloe heeded that expression, but sometimes she really couldn't ignore an item he thought revolting. One was a truly awful pair of snakeskin boots she fell in love with at first sight, and another was a designer hat with what looked like an entire ostrich draped over it.

"It's like a vulture!" Lex moaned when she eagerly plunked it down on her head and paraded in front of the mirror. "God, it's monstrous, Chloe, please take it off!"

"I like it," she protested. It was so horrible it was wonderful. She couldn't wait to wear it to work. "I want it!" And although he looked as if she had just stabbed her with a knife, Lex said, "Well, you've got my card, don't you?", and five minutes later Chloe left the shop with a big official hat box in her arms.

By three, Lex began to flag, so they took a short coffee break in a historical building.

"Are you getting tired?" Chloe asked, bouncing on her chair in a rush of shopping endorphins and strong French caffeine. "You're holding up admirably. I am proud of you, young grasshopper."

Lex snorted. "As long as you're having fun, I'm having fun," he drawled, but there was no sarcasm in his voice. "Tomorrow, it's culture day, so then I'll get my own back."

"Hah! You make it sound as if I'm some kind of barbarian! I like museums! And I want to climb the Eiffel Tower."

Lex peeked in one of her bags and smirked to himself. "I'm not sure you can still climb it. But there's an elevator so yes, we'll do that."

"Isn't Napoleon buried here, too? In some kind of dome?"

"Yes. At Les Invalides. If we have time we can pay it a visit. It's a bit too Julius Caesar to my taste, but quite impressive. By the way, if you want to get rid of all those parcels, we can have them taken to the hotel."

"Shouldn't we check in anyway? And what about my suitcase?"

"It's already been dropped off, and we can check in whenever we want. I know the proprietor," Lex added. "You can shop until the stores close at eight," he winced quietly, "and we're still ensured of a warm welcome at the hotel."

"They close at eight? Good god, only five hours left!"

"I have created a monster," Lex sighed. He let Chloe pay for the coffee. "Good, you've contributed your share. We still have the entire Rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré to go, and it's already getting dark."

"There's _another_ shopping street?"

"Oh yes," said Lex.

Chloe laughed. "You're going to need a second plane, Lex!"

Parisians ate late. Lex and Chloe had dinner in the Quartier Latin, a mass of small bistros and cute eateries advertised by pushy people that could have made a great career as salesmen. Chloe was somewhat surprised at Lex's choice; she'd expected some huge fancy restaurant, but she thought this was much nicer, and much more _French_ than yet another posh place where the waiters made her feel like a schmuck.

When they sauntered back to the hotel on Rue Mont San Michel (a very small, high class inn run by a husband and wife that seemed to know Lex quite well), the sounds and sights and smells of Paris foreign, glittery and exciting around her, happiness created a warm light in her full stomach; she squeezed Lex's arm with her own and kissed him in the middle of the street. It was Paris, nobody cared anyway. Nobody even SAW. In Metropolis, Lex Luthor kissing Chloe Sullivan would make heads turn at least, and cameras flash if the place was public enough. Here he was just a bald guy in an expensive coat kissing a small blonde woman. Their anonymity added to her contentment; it was so lovely being able to neck Lex when she felt like it.

"Happy?" Lex asked, smiling.

"Absolutely!"

"Mission accomplished, then."

"Oh yes! And you know what's best?"

"No?"

"There's seven hours of shopping loot waiting for me on my bed to try on and wear for your pleasure!"

Lex blinked. "Ah…yes…" he said faintly.

That night she initiated a one and a half hour-lasting fashion show, trying out all her new acquisitions and seeing how they fitted outside the shop. Poor Lex fell asleep after the sixth combination ('Oh look, I hadn't even noticed but this top looks great on this skirt as well! And I can wear these shoes with those pants too! Don't you think? Lex? Lex?'), but woke up again when she straddled him in her underwear and the great ostrich hat.

"Something somehow seems out of place," he muttered drowsily. He lifted a feather from where it drooped over her eyebrow and then smoothed it back into place again. "This really is the most godawfully ugly hat I've ever seen. Although in combination with lingerie I must say it holds a certain appeal."

"I knew you'd like it."

"I don't, it's hideous." He snapped open the fastening of her bra. "But you can keep your hat on."

"Why do I even bother shopping for clothes if all you want to do is take them off again?" Chloe lamented in mock-despair.

"I let you keep your hat on, don't I?" said Lex, and tossed her bra towards the lamp—and pouted when it wouldn't get stuck.

In the morning Lex let Chloe sleep late, because during the night (at ten past one, as a matter of fact, and in mid-sentence) jetlag crept up to her and knocked her into a coma, but at nine he woke her up, dragged her into the shower and soaped her up while she continued to sleep draped against his chest. He had hoped the water would wake her up. He was, unfortunately, mistaken.

_So incredibly sexy, _he laughed to himself while he shifted her weight from his left to his right arm and aimed the shower nozzle at her lower back, _taking a shower together with an unconscious woman._ "Hey Chloe. Chloe. Are you with me yet?"

"Muhhhh," Chloe moaned. Her eyelids flickered, but the fingers stroking his chest were more seeking support than intentionally caressing.

He pulled her somnambulant body through the rites of drying, combing and dressing, chuckling softly when she curled up on the bed and went back to sleep while he was pondering how to get her boots on. Still firmly off-line. Luckily the human body was programmed to execute several tasks more or less automatically, and to his delight she responded just perfectly to certain commands and phrases:

"Put on your boots. Come on, wake up. Open your eyes. Very good! You want to see Paris, right, not the inside of your eyelids. Are you hungry? You'll feel better when you've eaten something and had your coffee. Hey, is that a response? Coffee. Coffee. Coffee. Yes, just follow me. Down the hall, no, that's someone else's room. Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur, elle n'est reveiller plus. Chloe, open your eyes, you keep bumping into people. Alright, sit down. On TOP of the seat, thank you. Open your eyes. No, keep them open. Coffee."

Only when the Maitre d', at Lex's request, waved a coffee pot under her nose like an alternative version of smelling salts she slowly started to regain consciousness.

"Shall I get you a straw?" Lex asked with a grin, observing her hang over her cup, inhaling the reviving fumes. She raised bleary eyes and grunted. He wondered if she'd start to spout prophesies, like some kind of Greek priestess after a healthy dose of holy smoke. Having had his required six hours of sleep and more, Lex was more or less over his own jetlag, and the zombie in front of him made him feel particularly alert and energetic.

He was in a very good mood, this morning, and had been for the entire week. The cure was in its final testing phase and this very morning Michael and Emmy should have gotten their first injection.

He had booked a two-way ticket for Doctor Potter, who had sent him a mail three days ago—he wouldn't take his wife and kids to Africa for five years. That was fine with Lex; he'd made sure they wouldn't have to leave the comfy house they were living in. If the good doctor changed his mind somewhere in the next few lonely months, he'd happily arrange a reunion. He was profoundly satisfied that Potter had come to the conclusion (be it on his own or with the 'help' of his brother and family) that it was better to accept the punishment for his cowardice than expose his niece, and while that hadn't changed his sentence, it had softened Lex's attitude towards him. If Potter did well in Africa, Lex was more than prepared to laud him when he came back.

His wounds had healed to pink scars, although his shoulder remained a little stiff, and he had started working out again, so his four-and-a-bit pack was once more filling out into a six-pack, and he was almost back on weight.

Business was prosperous and interesting, all his projects were going well, and none of his illegal ventures were anywhere near approaching daylight. He hadn't seen a lawsuit in months, and even if he would, hell, his lawyers would deal with them. The new year was only five days old, but so far those days had been a hell of a lot more promising than the past year.

Felix Brockx and John Hartlow, the guys he'd met at the LuthorCorp New Year party, kept trying to draw him out to go clubbing for old time's sake, but so far he had fobbed them off with stories about overflowing schedules. He knew he shouldn't dive into a relationship the way he did, but there was very little he could do about it. When he did allow himself to fall in love, he went all the way, and it always took him a couple of week to be able to surface again and notice that there was more to life than work and the person he was currently involved with.

Chloe never forced him to say 'I love you' and rarely told him herself; she'd noticed it made him uncomfortable and simply showed instead of told. Another reason to love her. Damn. _One more reason and I'll be forced to learn how to play the guitar and bring serenades beneath her window,_ Lex thought sardonically. _And wouldn't that look odd, since she lives in a flat. _Thank god she had quite a few imperfections or he'd have been her bloody slave; as it was, he thought he managed not to come across too besotted. Doting lovebird behavior, he thought, was SO uncool.

He was still waiting for her to find her 'on' switch. So far, she had hardly progressed further than boot up, and it was almost ten now. Alright, according to her internal clock it was barely 3 a.m., but when in Rome, or in this case, Paris…He almost cheered when she finally picked up her cup and started drinking her coffee.

"Test…test…test…" he whispered, and she shot him a look that told him very clearly that he was definitely not coming across too besotted.

"You're such a moron."

"Ah, it talks!"

"Urgh."

"Or at least produces sound."

"Leeeeeex…have some mercy on my poor jetlagged soul."

"Hey, you slept most of the way. I didn't sleep at all and you won't find _me_ devolving into a lower life form."

"That's because you're not human," she grumbled and, to his disgust, dipped a croissant into her coffee. "You're a freak."

"You say it as if it's something offensive," Lex smirked. He cringed as she took a bite of the soggy croissant.

Chloe groaned. "It isn't. You're the sweetest freak I've ever met. But please, please give me a moment to wake up. I'm almost there."

Lex poured her more coffee.

Since the second day started somewhat late, they raced through Paris at a hundred miles an hour speed in order to be able to see as much as humanly possible. So it was up and down the Eiffel tower with exactly ten minutes to enjoy the view and take pictures, then to the Arc de Triomphe, then the Champs Elysees and then to the Louvre after a quick lunch in a grand café.

Although she was impressed with the huge amount of art in the Louvre, the one painting Chloe came to see was, of course, the Mona Lisa, and just as naturally she was disappointed upon seeing it.

"It's so small!" she complained, when the admiring crowd had finally parted enough to let her have a glimpse of the glass-encased painting. Somehow, she had expected to feel a compelling mystery the moment her eyes met Mona Lisa's, but all she really noticed was the cracks in the paint and the fact that Mona didn't seem to have any bosom and that the white of her eyes was rather yellow.

Saying this aloud made Lex laugh quietly but lengthily. "Maybe she was a heavy drinker," he suggested.

"Hmm." She studied the tag on the wall. "So this is Lisa del Giocondo. Why'd they call her Mona, then?"

"Mona's short for _ma donna_," Lex explained. "In Italian, _ma donna_ means _my lady_. This became _madonna_, and its contraction _mona_. So _Mona_ isn't her first name but a polite form of address, similar to _Ma'am_, _Madam_, or _my lady_."

Chloe raised an eyebrow in awe. "How do you know these things?"

"I read lots of travel guides," he said with a smile.

As let down as she was by Mona, Chloe was daunted by the Venus of Milo, who was far larger than she had imagined. Despite the missing arms of the seven foot goddess she could feel the power of the sculpture—at least until Lex remarked that she had a great ass.

"Just look at those globes," he murmured appreciatively.

Chloe growled. "You are so ruining my ancient art experience."

"If you are allowed to trail your hands so sensually over that bloke's pectorals, I am allowed to comment on Aphrodite's ass."

"He was very lovely. Reminded me of you, actually," she added slyly.

Lex raised one eyebrow, sensing, correctly, that there was a snake beneath the complimentary grass. "I remind you of Mercury. How flattering. Remind me never to wrap my towel around my hips like that again."

"Oh, come on, he's gorgeous. Really," Chloe said, grinning, "all you need is a helmet with wings and nobody would know the difference."

"Hmm," said Lex. He looked back at the Venus' backside, then turned Chloe around and stared at hers. "Now I know why I like Venus so much…"

"Hey! Hers is way bigger than mine."

"Well, she is roughly twenty inch taller than you…"

"Let's go to another room," Chloe said, pouting. "It's a woman's privilege to drool over nudes. When men start to do so, it's indecent."

Lex laughed. He put his arm around her shoulder. "I like your backside even better than Venus'," he said soothingly. "Don't worry, I'm not going to pull a Pygmalion on you."

"Who's Pygmalion?"

"He was a guy who did fall in love with a statue of Aphrodite's. At least, that's one of the interpretations. Another is that he made the statue himself, creating it to be more beautiful than any living woman, and then fell in love with it. I think the latter has something unpleasantly Frankensteinian."

"Maybe all the girls in his city were dreadful."

"Could be," said Lex. "Then again, the Greeks had a penchant for odd fetishes. Statues. Mirror images. Animals, you name it. They were probably very fond of windows too…Ow!" he added, when Chloe thumped his arm.

That evening they did dine in a horrendously expensive restaurant, and dinner lasted roughly three hours. Chloe didn't mind; she was exhausted after cruising through the entire Louvre and seeing the majority of Paris. It was good to be able to let her feet dangle for a while, and stuff herself with outstanding French cuisine.

At ten thirty they hurried back to the airport, and half an hour later the trip to Paris was officially over and they were on the way back.

Chloe had intended to stay up this time, but she lasted for all of two hours before nodding off in her chair.

When she woke up, hours later, it was because of a muted 'pop!'. The lights were dimmed, and outside it was dark as well. Far, far below, a sea reflected the moon on seemingly motionless waves. Lex was standing next to the mini bar, a bottle of champagne in one hand, a glass in the other. As she stared at him through half-opened eyes, he filled the glass, put the bottle back and sat down in a chair near the window and pressed his nose against the glass.

"Cheers," he whispered, lifting the flute towards the night sky outside. The toast did not sound particularly cheerful, yet bitterly triumphant.

"Lex?" Chloe asked. "Are you ok?"

His face was little more than a pale oval in the low light, but the shadowy line of his mouth curled vaguely upwards. "Did I wake you up? I'm sorry. Go back to sleep, we still have hours to go."

Chloe sat up straight. "Why are you drinking champagne?"

"Why? Want a glass too?"

"I'd rather have a coke."

He chuckled, opened the fridge door, handed her a can.

"Is there a particular reason why you are toasting to the sky?"

"No."

"Lex."

"I just happen to like champagne."

"Did you crash somewhere around here?"

"Yes. Well, no. But this is the last thing I saw before I crashed: a dark sky and an ocean below."

"And that warrants champagne because…"

"Because I like champagne," Lex said evasively.

Chloe sighed.

"I survived to like champagne, and that warrants the limitless consummation of champagne," Lex elucidated, without telling her a single thing.

"Lex, has it ever occurred to you that you might need help?"

"Because I like champagne?" Lex asked. "That seems a bit melodramatic, don't you think?" He smiled. _Back off_, that smile said, in the friendliest, gentlest way possible. _Back off or I'll make you._

Answering his smile, Chloe backed off. Guerrilla mode had been inactive for a very long time and she had no intention of activated it.

"Why don't you go and lie on the bed," Lex suggested. "You'll be more comfortable."

"Join me?"

He hesitated just long enough for her to notice. Then he nodded. "Sure."

But when she curled herself around him and closed her eyes, his own remained open, and when he shook her awake seven hours later because they were going to land and she needed to put on her seatbelt, there were shadows under his eyes, and she knew he hadn't slept for even half an hour. Despite the fact that his companion was her, in the plane. She had the uncomfortable feeling that it would take a lot more than a few years of distant friendship and a few weeks of blooming romance to enable Lex to sleep in planes again.

Chloe took one hour to shower and dress and drink coffee before she went to work. Before he left after dropping her off at her place, Lex handed her one soft, flat package, about the size of an A4, but much thicker.

"One final memory to Paris," he smiled.

Chloe gave him a big hug. "As if I need any more memories! It was lovely, Lex. Truly, magnificently lovely. Thank you very much. I loved it."

"Just wait until the jetlag catches up with you," Lex promised. He himself looked ready to fall over any time.

"At least I got to sleep on the plane again," Chloe said.

"I've got a nice long meeting in twenty minutes," Lex shrugged. "I'll just paint pupils on my eyelids and zonk out. Nobody will notice." He grinned. "Nobody ever does."

"Do I smell habit here?"

"Damn right. Well, I'd better go." He gave her a quick peck on the lips, which she lengthened by simply sticking out her tongue. He chuckled and obediently opened his mouth as well. "I'll see you tomorrow, I guess? You'll probably need to sleep up. I know I do, and I have to work late to make up for all those hours lost to culture."

"Absolutely," Chloe said. She waved him goodbye, regarded with relish the mass of packages and bags of clothes on her table, then shook herself and jumped under the shower. She made coffee while she dried her hair, munched a few crackers while she dressed and brushed her teeth while she selected which pair of shoes to wear.

Just before leaving, she opened the package Lex had given her, and burst out laughing as she unfolded a large, hideously pink T-shirt with the words 'I did Paris and all I got was this lousy T-shirt' printed on the front. Of course it came with one of Lex's jumbled notes as well.

_I guess I could have given you a shirt with 'I did Lex Luthor and all I got was this lousy T-shirt', but I guess you'd never wear it, and that would be a shame. Hope you enjoyed it. I did._

_L._

"Of course I did, you dummy," she murmured, and stroked the raised letters on the fabric. "You shouldn't even need to ask."

She folded the shirt and put it on the table, and then she drove as quickly as she could to reach the Daily Planet before noon, smiling all the time.

Then she saw her desk.

And the drawer.

And the smile slipped away from her face.

TBC


	26. Chapter 26

Hey guys

Hey guys! Sorry for the late update, I had to wrestle through some minor plot things to get this done. And I wrote some stuff for later chapters too, so…Well, anyway, here you are. The next one might be a bit late, too since tomorrow I'm leaving for Paris for the weekend. I should have waited writing the previous chapter.

As always, thanks for all your lovely reviews.

Storm breaks.

Twenty-six: In which Chloe's curiosity gets the better of her and Lex suffers the consequences

"How do you feel?" Lex asked.

"I'm an airoplane!" Ronny screamed. He ran by with his arms spread out and producing a mighty roar—the kind of roar, Lex couldn't help thinking, that meant the airplane probably had failing engines.

"Good," Jessica said.

"And what about those flashes of yours?"

"That's getting better, too. I don't have them so often anymore. On the other hand, they do seem to become more vivid, and longer."

"Had any about me lately?" He asked it with a smile, but not without apprehension.

The girl grinned, and flushed a little, causing Lex's eyebrows to rise, but then she shook her head. "Not recently. But then I hadn't seen you very recently either. I might have more now you've visited me."

"I would feel more at ease if you hadn't blushed," Lex said dryly.

"Yeah, well," she looked at him with sparkling eyes. "It's not as if I can help it. And it's mighty educational."

"I'm not qualified for sex-ed."

"I'm underage anyway, so that's ok."

Lex repressed the sudden urge to crush her to his chest and hug her tightly. He wondered what she'd look like in six or seven years, and if she'd still be such a lovely person, or whether adulthood would have spoiled her like it did with so many other girls. And boys.

"I'm glad to see everyone's doing so well," he said, looking around with a satisfied smile on his face.

The cure had now been distributed to every child in the ward. Emmy and Michael had improved dramatically, although Lex was not allowed to see them because they were still too weak to receive visitors. Where his own blood had stopped or slowed the growth of the cancer, Clark's blood actively made it shrink altogether. Lex's oncologists had predicted a total recovery within three weeks for the children in the ward, and two months for the more severe cases. One of the empty beds had gained an occupant, a girl so frail and pale she looked like she was made of paper. Currently, she was helping Amy build a barn for all the animals that, now Christmas was over, had become homeless. That girl was Cory Dean, now officially the first child to survive Cradle Cancer. Especially looking at Cory made Lex experience a profound sense of well-being.

Success. Even if it was with another man's blood, he HAD made a difference, and he would be remembered for this feat for a long time, if not by the general public, who'd get bored with it soon, but then at least by the medical world.

"Three weeks," Jessica replied. "Three weeks and then I can go home."

"Yes. Are you homesick often?"

She nodded. "Yeah…I really miss my parents, and my baby sister. Mom brings me pictures, but she's growing so fast…I'm afraid she won't even recognize me when I get home. And I miss my books, and the cat…"

"I'm sorry," Lex said, feeling an uncomfortable stab of guilt.

She smiled dazzlingly. "That's ok. You got me out again, too, right? And I've had fun here, too. I mean, it's not horrible being here. I've made a lot of friends, and if we felt good enough we could play here too…"

Without a word, both of them glanced at the ever-energetic Ronny, who had now apparently turned into a submarine.

"I sometimes think they made a mistake with their diagnosis," she said dryly.

"I wonder…does he ever stop running? Whenever I'm here he's plowing ahead full throttle."

"Oh yes," she said. "After a few hours his batteries fail, and then he falls asleep for a few hours. He's pretty adorable, though," she added, "even if he's a bit like a mosquito on crack. I think this place would have been a lot more frightening without him buzzing around."

Lex thought she might be right. Nothing better to distract you from your misery than annoyance. He could know. Of course, his annoyance (in the shape of a homicidal Robinson Crusoe) had been created by his own mind. Only now he started to appreciate the fail-safe of his brain. It had known he'd go mad if he were left to his own devices, so it had created something to distract him. Yes, the mind was a wonderful thing.

After leaving the kids he searched for Valerie for a while, but she had been swallowed by the flood of relieved parents who wanted to know when they could collect their children, and how their illness had affected them; she was nowhere to be found. Part of him was relieved at her absence. She was a great woman, Valerie, but she still made him blush whenever he met her face to face. Blushing made him feel like a virgin, and memories of his virginal years in turn made him feel like little Alexander. Little Alexander was someone he'd rather forget about.

On his way out, he just noticed a camera team stepping out of the elevator. _Cory Dean, the Recovery, _Lex thought sarcastically. He hastily changed direction. As much as he loved being on television, he had no desire whatsoever to be caught up in the tearful sequel to the Innocent Child, Dying and Miraculously Reviving.

"Is that him?"

"Yes! Start rolling! Start rolling! Mister Luthor! Mister Luthor!!"

Too late. A stampede of heels and sneakers rumbled through the hallway. Lex sighed. He could run or confront the masses. Zen Tsu was clear on which strategy to follow. Lex adjusted his expression and faced the hordes of Media with a benevolent smile.

Chloe held out against the insistent pull of the envelop in the lowest drawer of her desk for two more days, feeling increasingly like the girl in Blue Beard. The temptation was blood-curdling. As long as she was busy, really busy, either at work (articles and interviews) or physically (sex) the envelop's existence was just a minor tickle at the back of her neck, but the moment she relaxed enough to take as much as a cup of coffee, her eyes were automatically drawn back to the drawer and its tantalizing contents.

At least ten times a day she made up her mind to a. take the letter to the police, b. destroy it and throw away the key, c. take the key and run to the station to open the locker. If her mind had been a bed she'd by now stripped it down to the frame, so often she'd have made it up and remade it again.

Every decision came with a consequence. Option a., take the letter to the police, would result in the police opening that locker and finding the evidence Edge had left there. And that would both endanger Lex and take it out of her hands. (She tried to shout over that last bit. After all, why would she be interested in having the means to bring down Lex? No, she didn't go to the police because whatever was there in that locker might harm his reputation and she didn't want to run that risk.)

Option b. she tried not to think about too much, since there was no other reason why she hadn't yet performed this option than that she couldn't make herself throw away the one possibility to find out the truth about LuthorCorp. That implied that she wanted to bring him down, and she didn't want that, did she? Besides, it all had to be lies. He'd told her he didn't have any illegal businesses running, and if she didn't believe him, what good was their relationship then?

Option c.

Option c. gave her a headache. It would be the surest way to confirm Edge was just playing with her, but it was also the surest way to find out if his allegation were founded, and Chloe was not sure she actually wanted to open that can of worms.

There was one additional option, of course: tell Lex. But with every day that passed, she found it more difficult to open her mouth and tell him. After all, wouldn't he ask why she hadn't told him when she first got the letter? Why should she tell him at all? Then again, why HADN'T she told him? Because she was afraid? If so, was her fear for him, for her, or for what he'd do to her? Or was it because she was afraid he'd make any evidence disappear?

As long as she was with Lex physically, in the same room, in bed, at the table or somewhere else, she always came to the conclusion that the only right thing to do was throw away the key. Anything else was treason, pure and simple. Martin Edge had almost killed him; how could she possibly aid him in any way?

But when she was alone, her doubts returned. Edge had wanted to kill him for a reason. He had seemed like a reasonable person, only corrupted by his hate. And there was the fact that finding out about and uncovering LuthorCorp's illegal projects had always been such an important part of her life…

Headache. Although that might also be blamed on the effects of the jetlag after Paris. Ever since she'd come back she'd felt a little off, as if the Metropolis cold she'd been able to dodge all these months had finally snuck up on her.

She resisted option c. for two more days before, during lunch break, taking out the envelop again and resolutely shaking out the key. The edges of the thick paper had become grimy and fuzzy after all her fiddling with it. _If I just pick it up, _she figured, _the temptation will be gone. If it is worth checking out, I'll read it through, and unless it's really good proof I'll just throw it away._ With this pathetically weak reasoning she put the key in her pocket and hurried with a guilty but eager heart to the south Met Station.

Locker 319.

She hadn't brought the letter with her since she knew it by heart. Standing in the central hall she felt her heart pound in her chest as she drifted to the right side of the terminal and looked at the numbers of the lockers.

. 317. She halted in front of an inconspicuous, gray, plain locker. 319.

"What do you hold?" she murmured to herself. Her fingers clutched the key so tightly the dents bit into her flesh. "Severed heads? Dead women?"

She almost turned around, but almost was not an option. The key fit precisely, and the locker opened with a small, innocent 'squeak'. It was empty.

She blinked and stuck her head inside.

No, it wasn't empty. There was another envelop inside, a small gray one this time, stuck to the very back of the locker. She reached inside and pulled it out; it was open. Inside was a small folded piece of paper, another small, blank key and a memory stick.

Chloe moaned. Her pulse thumped with a dull pain in her temples. She unfolded the piece of paper.

_Dear Miss Sullivan,_

_Either consciously or subconsciously you must have decided that LuthorCorp's evil practices must come to an end. However, to protect you against yourself—after all, you are on the verge of bringing down someone I have come to understand is a friend of yours—I have added one more barrier. It is easy to overcome, but it will keep you from misguided actions. For more instructions, please plug in the memory stick into your computer._

_Yours,_

Martin Edge

"I fucking HATE you," Chloe hissed. She slammed the locker shut and stamped out of the station.

The next logical step in the process would be to stare at the memory stick for a couple of days before giving in. Chloe decided to spare herself the humiliation, blame it on her womanhood and thrust the stick into her computer the moment she arrived back at work. The new hardware was detected, installed, and ready for use. The name of the memory stick was _P.3-5vertical_, and it's contents were password-locked.

Chloe stared at her screen with her mouth open, a mixture of hate, disgust, all-consuming curiosity and grudging admiration bubbling in her head like lava.

_Oh, you're so smart. You're so. Bloody. Smart. There's no way I can let this lie. You're really, really good, Edge._

Because he got her, hook, line and sinker. She wasn't even thinking about Lex, only about how to solve this little riddle.

Reporters must be resourceful if they want to get somewhere. Chloe was nothing if not resourceful. She picked up her bag and fished out the crossword puzzle booklet.

_P.3-5vertical._

Page 3, vertical number five. She had crossed this one out, since the few answers she'd filled in had made it impossible to solve the whole puzzle. Number five, however, was correct—or whether it was correct or not, she was convinced this was the password to the memory stick.

The question was: 'Chemical element with the symbol Ag'. She had filled in 'Silver'.

Chloe typed in 'silver' in the password box. It closed. She could now browse the contents of the stick. It contained a folder named 'LuthorCorp' and a word document titled 'please read'. She clicked on the latter, opening it.

_Miss Sullivan,_

_You have shown admirable perseverance. Very well, your determination will be rewarded. Together with this stick, you have found a key. It is a key that fits to a mailbox at the post office of 87__th__ and 4__th__. The P.O. Box number corresponds with second, third, seventh and eight number of the 3__rd__ person in the telephone book in your old phone. _

_In this box you will find hard copies of several of the files included in the LuthorCorp folder, and some original documents I have gathered over the years. Many of the files you will find are original. I have copies, but these are the real thing. Even if you still have reservations about the truth of my claims, I believe that any doubts will be taken away upon consulting these documents._

_This is the last note you will ever receive from me; it is up to you, now. Do with what I have given you whatever you like. I have all faith that your decision will be the right one._

_Yours,_

Martin Edge

"Because you're such a dedicated little traitor," Chloe muttered. She rubbed her throbbing forehead, staring balefully at her monitor. Even if she wanted to, she couldn't collect Edge's proof; she was late handing in her article as it was, and like it or not, she still had a job to finish. At least she wouldn't see Lex today, since he had one of those endless meetings of his in Manhattan. She wasn't sure she could face him at the moment.

_Want to be able to face him, Sullivan? What about showing him this letter and letting him deal with it?_

She sighed, disgusted with herself. Then again, if he'd told her the truth, she wouldn't find anything in that mailbox. So it wouldn't hurt checking it out, could it?

_You pathetic bitch._

_Now I know what Pandora must've felt like._

If I know how ugly this is going to get, why am I going through with this?

Why did the girl in Blue Beard open the door with the forbidden key? Had she known, somewhere deep down, about the headless corpses? And did her actions save her or condemn her? If she hadn't looked, would she have lived happily ever after with Blue Beard? Chloe doubted it, not with that horrible key twinkling innocently on that ring.

"If he's got nothing to hide, I have nothing to be afraid of," she said aloud, put the key and the note into her purse and went back to work.

By four, the headache that had been plaguing her off and on for the past few days had become so bad she called in sick and left the Daily Planet building. The article on SARS was finished, be it a little hurriedly, but if she had to stare at a monitor for a minute longer her eyes would explode. When she left, she found Lois outside latched to a cigarette, dragging in the cancerous smoke with such greed it made Chloe grin despite herself.

"Getting your fix?" she teased.

"Mm," Lois nodded around her fag. She had a second cigarette tucked behind her ear. "What's your excuse? Off on another heist?"

Chloe shook her head. "I've got this crappy headache. It's been resisting three aspirins and one Aleve so far, so I'm calling it a day."

"Poor thing," Lois clucked. "I told you, going up and down to Paris in one weekend's a spectacularly bad idea. It's the equivalent of a 24-hour binge with a bunch of soldiers for company." She was smiling, however. Ever since that cup of coffee when Chloe was feeling down, she hadn't said a bad word about Lex—even if she wasn't exactly forthcoming with any praise, or even willing to start a conversation with Chloe that featured Lex Luthor as himself.

Right now, Chloe was absurdly grateful for that.

"Yeah," she said vaguely. "I think I'll just go to bed early and see how I'm feeling tomorrow. Maybe I can still scare off the flu if I arm myself with lots of vitamins and tea."

"That's the best way to beat the flu," Lois agreed sagely. She gave Chloe a pat on the shoulder. "And be sure to call me if you need anything. Shopping, gossip, whatever. Just give me a call—only not tomorrow between ten and four," she added. "Then I'll be at a conference on rape drugs."

"A conference on rape drugs. That sounds…really interesting."

"Uhuh. I'm hoping for samples. I could do with a nicely submissive boyfriend. Bushwhack's way too possessive to my taste."

"Wait a minute," Chloe protested, clasping her poor head in order to keep it together and functioning, "Bushwhack? You're sleeping with Bushwhack?"

"Well…he stayed over at New Year's." She shrugged. "He still hasn't left. Might as well profit from the situation, don't you think?"

"And now you're considering _drugging_ him?"

"Didn't you notice how hyper that guy is?" Lois asked. "I mean, I'm nothing compared to him! And he won't leave, he's just hanging around mooning over me—as in, literally mooning. He walks around naked half of the time. Not that that's a bad thing, mind, I'm kind of used to seeing naked guys, but somehow it's a bit of a shock coming home and going to the kitchen for something to drink and running smack into Bushwhack dressed like Adam, coming on to me with the charm of the snake." She raised her arm, shaping a snake's head with her hand and waved with it. She breathed in half of her cigarette. "Adam, snake, paradise; after a while I run out of biblical homilies."

Chloe stared at her with her mouth open. "Can't you just tell him to leave?"

"Yeah, well…His dad kind of kicked him out…"

"For god's sake how old is he? Twenty-five, twenty-six?"

"Actually," Lois snickered, "he's only nineteen."

"_What_?"

"Yeah, I was somewhat daunted too. He looks pretty mature, don't you think?"

"Oh god Loiiiiiis," Chloe moaned. Just what she needed on top of everything else: her cousin was screwing an underage nudist soldier-boy who wouldn't leave her house. Why couldn't she keep pining after Clark without knowing it? Her head was splitting.

Lois put the back of her hand against her forehead, her skin cool and dry and smelling of smoke and soap. "Don't worry about Bushwhack," she said, a little more serious. "I'll deal with him. He'll have to get back to base one of these days. You look about done in, and while you don't seem to have a fever I think you're a bit clammy, too, honey. Go to bed, get some sleep. D'you want me to get you anything?"

"Nah," Chloe said. "I'm fine. I still have some soup and a bit of bread, that's all I need. Thanks, though. But about Bushwhack…"

"Rape drug,' Lois said meaningfully. "And then I'll phone his mom. Or my dad, if I can't get a hold of his mom. I'll get rid of him, you'll see. Can you drive or shall I drop you off?"

"I can drive," Chloe said. She pulled her car keys from her purse.

"Be careful!" Lois drew the second cig from behind her ear and lit it with the stub of the first one.

"Thanks," said Chloe. She stepped into her car. And then she drove straight to the post office on 87th and 4th.

The 3rd name in the telephone book of Chloe's old phone was Anderson, Danny, who'd been a class mate in a writing course she'd taken a few years ago. The second, third, seventh and eight digits of his phone numbers were 8,3,1 and 6, and it was to this P.O. Box that she tottered.

Again the key fitted without so much as a hitch. Inside the container was a thick stack of directories and paper folders. Chloe swiped them all out and into a plastic bag she had found in the back of her car, closed the mailbox and went home.

The first thing she did when she came home was put the kettle on and swallow two more aspirins. Now she'd admitted to herself that she was ill, it seems her cold had crawled from behind the fence it had been hiding behind while poking a stick into her head, and had now engaged in a full hostile takeover of her body. When she took off her coat she started to shiver.

_Is this some sort of punishment?_ she wondered as she fluffed up her couch with a blanket and a couple of extra pillows. _Because I went behind his back?_ She certainly felt rotten about it—not rotten enough, though, to call him up and tell him he had to come home because he had to relieve her of this blood-stained key.

She turned on the TV and went back to the kitchen to make tea, not eager to subject her burning eyes to the flashes from the television but drilled by her profession to watch the news anyway. Besides, Lex would be on. When he called her this afternoon to tell her he wouldn't be in this evening because of the meeting in Manhattan, he'd also mentioned, casually, that he might be on the news because he had failed to scram before the press caught up with him at LuthorCare.

Chloe smiled as she poured herself a mug of Jasmine tea. Somehow, she didn't think Lex had run quite as fast as he could to stay ahead of the camera. He was as bad a media whore as they came—and like any whore, he performed very well when standing in the spotlights. He performed very well, period.

_Don't go there, not now._

Closing her eyes against the glare from the TV and the bait of the bag she had dumped on the table, she breathed in the steam from her mug and listened to the enthusiastic voice of the anchor describing all the misfortune in the world.

More deaths in Afghanistan…

Disasters in the East…

Murder at high schools…

Food poisoning amongst babies…

Chloe drifted off, lulled into a half-sleep by the soothing flood of bad news washing over her. She only perked up again when the news reader said in a slightly different tone of voice, "Thankfully, we've got some positive news as well! Over to you, Beatrice!"

"Thank you, Krissy! Yes, after months of speculation and half-successful tries, LuthorCare has finally succeeded in creating a promising treatment for that bane to young children, which is known to the public as Cradle Cancer."

"A promising treatment, Beatrice? I got the idea that this new treatment is a definite cure."

"Yes, Krissy. So far the results are spectacular, but until those 26 children are out of hospital with a clean bill of health, I prefer the term 'promising' to 'definite'. Especially since no one seems to be able to give an explanation for this cure. Our source speaks of a 'gift from God', but nobody is able to tell exactly where it came from."

_I could give you a hint, _Chloe thought, inhaling jasmine and keeping her eyes closed. _It starts with a C. He isn't god, but at times he comes pretty damn close in my opinion._

"We were lucky enough to run into Mister Luthor this afternoon. Here are his views on the progress of his treatment of Cradle Cancer."

Chloe opened her eyes. Lex always looked…at ease, on TV. So many people appeared hurried or badgered or shifty in front of a camera; Lex looked as if he'd rehearsed every word he spoke in front of a mirror. She hardly listened to what he was saying—she knew the story—instead observing his expression and body language as he deftly steered around too probing questions and answered only questions he was willing to answer. His face perfectly echoed the tone of his voice: an engaging mixture of relief to find that the children were doing better, pride at finding the cure, apology that it had taken so long, and so many children's lives before this last break-through, satisfaction that he had succeeded at last; a subtle reminder that he was the one who had saved the lives of those children that had survived.

He never mentioned Amy, and when Beatrice tried to steer the conversation toward her and her miraculous return, he managed to turn the conversation towards medical assessment instead. Chloe hardly noticed him doing so, and she was paying close attention. She doubted anyone simply watching the news as a quick touch-up on what was going on in the world would detect that expert deflection.

_You're good, too. Damn it, you and Edge…I'm really sorry, Lex, but when it comes to manipulating people you're like bloody twins._

Still, when she saw him like this, with that perfect 'junior genius businessman' mask hiding everything she knew that was behind it, not only the darkness but that humor, that passion, that charming idiocy he sometimes displayed…seeing him like the rest of the world saw him made her feel unpleasantly distanced.

"The one thing that is important," Lex said in that slow drawl of his that made him sound serious and lazy at the same time, "is that we've conquered this disease. The lives of these children are saved and that is what I set out to achieve: to make sure that this illness would not cause any more casualties. I can only be grateful that through the efforts of LuthorCare another form of cancer has become treatable. Now," a fine, arrogant smile just touched the corners of his mouth, "if you'll excuse me…"

"Whore," Chloe smiled. She turned off the TV, put her mug on the ground and closed her eyes, waiting for the painkillers to start working.

It was almost eleven PM. Chloe had moved to her bed, but was now undoing any healing influence of bed rest by sitting with her back propped up against three pillows while browsing through one of the files she had found in mailbox 8316.

Her headache had cleared somewhat, but now her sinuses were filling up and her throat was starting to ache. She had made more tea and placed a box of tissues on her night stand; that was all she could do to make herself comfortable. Fortunately the power of curiosity was doing an excellent job distracting her from her physical misery.

She had dived into the first file with the expectation to be confronted with crimes that stank to high heaven—the kind of feeling she got when guiltily eager opening a Story or other glossy, hoping to be shocked. At first, it was a bit of a let-down. Somehow she couldn't really be bothered about bribes distributed and accepted by politicians and other prominent figures in society—Lex had pointed out a few of those to her in order to expose their corruptness; he used LuthorCorp's somewhat shady reputation to draw in people he somehow wanted out of the way, paid them off and then exposed them (or have them exposed by people like Chloe), thereby clearing his own company of any suspicion.

Several of the figures mentioned in Edge's file had indeed been exposed, and so Chloe did not care much about the ones she didn't recognize. Lex—and Lionel, too, since while Lex had taken over, Lionel was still very much in the picture—always waited until the timing was perfect before withdrawing the protecting cover of their multinational and putting the unfortunate pocket-filler into the bright sun and camera flash light.

Neither could she care much for pollution. There were numerous cases of LuthorCorp or one of their sister company-caused pollution, every one of them taken to court, most of them won, some of them lost, all of them settled. Lex had always been keen on preventing or at least minimizing toxic waste or leakage of other hazardous substances.

"I want to _own_ this world," he had once said, when she asked why he was so concerned about industrial waste, "not kill it. Besides, if you start illegally dumping waste, it's very easy to prove you're poisoning the environment. And I like cows, really. They look much better standing up than lying down with their feet up in the air."

The information scraped together by Edge seemed far-fetched and unconvincing to Chloe, at least when it came to incriminating Lex. LuthorCorp under Lionel had been significantly less interested in the well-being of cows and other creatures grazing their nourishment directly from the soil, but after 2004, after Lex's take-over, things had become noticeably better. She flipped through the files one at a time, feeling both relieved and disappointed, and increasingly ready to lie down and go to sleep.

Until she came to a file called _**North-East Met**_, where someone had written _Level 3_ beneath the printed title with a blue pen.

"Level three…" she muttered. She squeezed the bridge of her nose, cast a quick glance at her alarm clock. Almost 11:30. She really ought to go to sleep. _Yeah, as if, with this lying on my night stand._ She blew her nose, poured herself another mug of tea and opened the file.

'Date: 02 March 2003

Location: North-East Met complex, floor –2.

Case: Unknown number of people dead with missing limbs (discovered: 2, more presumed missing)

Situation: (as far as identified): Experiments on homeless people taken from the street that often result in death. Victims are all unerringly amputees; it is unknown whether they were whole before experiments but wounds found on one of the two recovered victims suggest amputations were part of the experiments.

Infiltration: failed, but C. managed to drop a recording device. Length: 8 hours. Material used: 8:37 min.'

Another note in blue pen was scribbled next to the last sentence. It said 'see LuthorCorp/Level3/N-E Met Complex/file01.wav on memory stick'.

She read on first:

'Objective of experimentation: Unknown.

Results published in LuthorCorp database: none.

Person overseeing project: Prof. Dr. Shaw, E.

Started up by: Luthor, A. between January 2002 and February 2002.

State of Project: Abandoned per 24 May 2002.'

"Well that was a short little project," Chloe murmured to herself. She skipped through a full page of speculations on inter-body weapon insertion that seemed to her unfounded and panicky, and yawned. "Yada yada yada. You know, Martin, pal? Maybe you should've tried having a hobby of some sorts. Lots of people paint; it's supposed to be very relaxing."

Glancing at the clock, she noted it was now 11:40. "I'll give you five more minutes to draw my attention," she told the file as she slipped out of bed to get her laptop and the memory stick. "Then I'm going to sleep and you will end up in Lex's hearth."

Now she was up she might just as well visit the bathroom and brush her teeth. Her head felt like it was filled with cotton, but her thermometer told her she did not have a fever. Just a cold then. More than enough to make her feel damned uncomfortable.

She yawned again, plugged in the memory stick and entered the password 'silver'.

"All forty pieces of it. Money down the drain. What a waste."

The Level3 folder in the LuthorCorp directory indeed had a North-East Met Complex subfolder, and it had a .wav file, which she opened in a player. "Well, here goes…"

A terrible, agonized scream tore from her speakers, causing her to jump up in fright and lunge for the stop button.

Jesus Christ. What the fuck?

She turned down the sound before pressing play again. The scream continued, less loud but constant and so filled with raw pain it made her stomach clench. Then a second voice joined the scream, adding a thin, high note of agony to the macabre duet. It went on for almost thirty seconds, then a door slammed and she heard Lex's voice, uncharacteristically hoarse and sounding about as shocked as she felt herself.

"What the hell is going on here? What's happened?"

Another, lower and significantly calmer voice replied, _"Like I told you. We seem to have run into a minor problem."_

_"Minor?"_ Lex cried. One of the screaming voices fell silent; the other seemed to gain volume. _"You call this a 'minor problem'? Do something about it!"_

_"I'm afraid,"_ the other voice said, _"that there is nothing I can do."_

_"What on earth do you mean? Surely you can tranquilize them? They're..."_Another cry interrupted him, and Lex's voice rose in alarm_. "Whoa! Stop! Don't do that! Jesus Christ stop doing that!" _The sound of footsteps, more sobbing cries, and in between all Lex shouting _"Stop it! Stop it! Jack, please, just STOP doing that! Put it down!"_

_"It hurts!"_ another man's voice gasped, gravely with pain. _"It hurts, god, it hurts! It's got to come off! It's killing me, it's gonna kill me!"_

_"No,"_ Lex said, and now he was speaking in that low, calming way he'd used with Edge as well. _"Jack, no. Don't. It'll be alright. I'm going to give you an injection and everything will be alright. Shaw, give me 50 CC of morphine."_

_"It won't help him."_

_"Just shut up and give it to me! Oh christ, Jack, stop! Give me that saw! Give it to me! This is not going to help you so give it b—"_

_"Lex,"_ the other man said, just as the man Chloe assumed was Jack started to howl in short staccato bursts. _"Lex, it won't work. It's nerve damage, and it's fatal. The calcium solution's damaged their brains. I've already given them morphine—I've overdosed them, two times over. It won't register. They're dying."_

_"It's got to come OFF!!"_ Jack shrieked.

_"Let go of me! Help me constrain him…damn it! There must be something."_ Lex's voice was muffled and shaking. _"You must be able to do something for them!"_

_"I can shoot them, or give them a fatal injection."_

"I can't accept that! Jack, listen to me. Please give me the saw. Please...just...fuck!"

Jack bayed in agony, making Chloe whimper in her bed. Even though the quality of the sound was rather poor coming through her laptop, she thought she could hear some sort of…pattering. Trickling. Dripping.

_"Then they'll live for another three, four hours,_" the calm voice continued unperturbedly. _"Well, __**he**__ will. Jack won't. This is really for the best, Lex, trust me. Bleeding out is the most humane way to go at the moment."_

The horrible guttural screams had by now weakened to sobs, rasping like static through the inadequate speakers of Chloe's laptop. The other person was wailing, rather like an injured cat. After a while, the sobs stopped.

_"Why,"_ Lex whispered, _"didn't you secure him, like you did with Elroy? How could he have gotten to that saw?"_

_"I did,"_ the calm voice said_. "He must've pulled himself free. He's dead, by the way. Better for him."_

_"There really isn't anything you can do for Elroy?"_

_"I'm afraid not."_

"What about gas? Formaldehyde? Anything?"

_"I doubt it'll work. His brain doesn't process ordinary pulses anymore. And then what? Even if it does knock him out for a few minutes, the moment he wakes up again he'll go right back to screaming his lungs out. And then he'll die."_

_"At least he wouldn't be suffering!"_

_"The only thing I can do for him is slice his wrists, or artery, like Jack did so...abundantly."_

_"This is NOT the time for flippancy!"_ Lex snarled. _"I want a full report on this! This was NOT supposed to happen!"_

_"I totally agree,"_ the calm man said, speaking a little louder as the remaining man's screams became louder again. _"And I am very sorry. I know where the error lies, though. It's the calcium solution. It poisons their..."_

"I don't care. Do something! Stop him screaming like that! Just...do something!"

There were a few seconds of unabated screaming, and then a high whining sound, followed by gurgling breathing and finally silence.

_"Christ,"_ Lex whispered. A short pause, then, _"He's dead."_

_"You wanted me to shut him up,"_ the man he'd called Shaw said. _"This was the only way to do so. He was going to die anyway, Lex. I'm sorry, it won't happen again, I swear it. I..."_

_"You're damn right it won't happen again! I'm terminating this project."_

_"You can't do that."_

_"Like hell I can't. When you mentioned 'a minor set-back, a failure of some sorts' I got the impression you were talking about a lack of growth, infection, detachment…not this!"_

"_In the name of progress, sacrifices must be made."_

Lex's voice became so cold Chloe felt chills run up and down her back. _"Don't you dare be supercilious with me, Shaw. I am not in the habit of letting my staff tell me what to do—especially if they mess up like this!"_

"_Lex…Look, I understand. I am sorry. But I KNOW where I went wrong, and I can remedy it. If we stopped now…all this would be for nothing. These men would have died for nothing! While if you let me continue…You read my theories, you saw the calculations. It should work. It will work! Please, I'm begging you, don't give up now."_

There was a long, laden silence. Finally, Lex's voice said, _"Fine. But I'm warning you, if anything like this…"_ and then the fragment ended and the media player jumped back to ready.

Chloe stared at it without seeing the screen, her breath coming quick and hot against the fingers she had pressed against her mouth, her heart thudding in her temples.

_What was that? God, what was that? Was that what it sounded like? What the hell was that!?_

2 A.M. Chloe was sitting amidst wads of used paper tissues, stacks of paper and folders strewn about her, reading. Her head ached, her eyes were gritty and burning and her body was begging for sleep, but reporters were a tough breed and so she ignored her discomfort.

She had tried to listen to the gruesome recording once again, but the moment that first terrible scream burst forth she had pressed stop and closed the player. There was no way she was going to listen to that again without a knife pressed to her throat.

There was more, though; cases with more evidence than just a sound tape without any reference. There were emails printed out and filed chronologically, documents of projects either Lionel or Lex had funded, started up and/or monitored, minutes and notes apparently stolen from people's desks, meticulously gathered per project with comments and assumptions added by Edge.

Some of the projects might be illegal, but only in the strictest way of the word, without any laws being broken but the law of having a permit. But other reports made her flesh quiver with chills. Experiments, on animals, sometimes on humans; poisons created and tested abroad in wars; weapons that annihilated villages in one swoop. Then there were protecting suits that would withstand any kind of weapon, created of material no scientist could identify. She read about tests ran on almost every living creature on earth; what kind of tests Edge and his companions had never been able to find out, but even though the animals were all shipped back from where they had been taken, their anxiety dripped from the questions they had put down on the page.

What on earth was LuthorCorp doing? Why were they doing it? They created medication for diseases—but in another department they were creating diseases far worse than those they cured. They were investing huge amounts of money in research for 'smart' painkillers that could 'find' pain in the human body and take it away without polluting the rest of the healthy body—but in the late nineties Lionel had created a truth serum that made people that lied suffer from blood clots.

Their scientific and technologic findings had greatly improved the level of living of people situated both in rich and third world countries—but Lex was also overseeing a perfectly legal project creating nano-technology that would enable a third party to completely take over another's body and make it act according to the other's wish. This technology would save hundreds of lives, Edge's paper claimed sarcastically, because instead of wasting precious time flying all over the world, leading scientists, brain surgeons and, indeed, musicians could now simply take over any other body and use it from a long distance.

_What, _Edge had written in the margin of a copy of a general's jubilant reaction to the latest results, _would happen if one of those drinkable body-snatchers would fall into the hands of terrorists? They wouldn't even need doubles anymore; they'd be able to take over anyone they wanted—up to the very president. And then have him commit suicide after murdering every important political figure at a Euro-Top._

As she was reading, it occurred to Chloe that no matter how well she thought she knew Lex, she really had no idea who and what he was. What he did.

He knew everything about her, and she thought that with the glossies, the biographies, the news items and the interviews (not to mention all those hours they'd spend chatting after they'd managed to detach themselves from one another) she knew pretty much all there was to know about him.

But no. Despite all that media attention, despite her PERSONAL attention, he was still a stranger.

She turned a page, and her hand froze. The title of the next topic was 'Cradle Cancer'.

Morning found Chloe coughing and peaky but dressed, but not for work. She'd called in sick the moment she got up at nine; there was no way she would be able to get any work done today. Her hands shook and her head ached, but she couldn't sit still and her thoughts were like a charm of magpies migrating for the summer, flying this way and that, touching down on the one notion: 'Do I love Lex?' and then taking off again.

She was deeply, deeply shocked, disappointed and insulted.

Because she sometimes took work home with her, she had, ten months ago, bought one of the old multifunctionals from the Daily Planet when its fax operation had broken down; they would have thrown it away otherwise and she could use the copy function. Perry had let her have it from 300 bucks and it printed and copied like a dream, even if she couldn't use it to fax things.

The multifunctional-with-one-function-less was positioned next to her dryer in the guest room (effectively making it impossible for any guest to inhabit the room). At nine-thirty she copied the entire 'Cradle Cancer' file—not because it was the worst she had found in the swamp of Luthor filth Edge had dumped upon her, but because this was the file that made her tremble with fury whenever she laid eyes on it. Or thought about it. Or thought about Lex's tiny little smirk on TV.

Remembering that smile made her hands shake so badly she could hardly bind the paper together and stuff it into her purse. It was a miracle she made it to Lex's office without either driving someone over or getting killed herself; she was far too distracted to take heed of her surroundings, let alone anticipate other people's driving maneuvers.

She parked in front of the door, not intending to stay long enough to get fined. Vengeful fury would have been best portrayed if she'd worn high heels that clicked menacingly on the floor, but since she was having enough trouble simply keeping upright today, she had put on flat boots whose soles only thumped dully. Ignoring the information desk, she went straight up to Lex's office, past the smart-looking forty-ish woman she guessed was the illustrious Mary, who raised her head and then her eyebrows when she said, "I'm Chloe Sullivan. Lex's expecting me," but let her pass through the room, through the waiting room beyond it and to the door of Lex's office.

_A. Luthor. No titles, although you have some. Just A. Luthor. Who the fuck is A. Luthor?_

She turned the handle, flung open the door and thrust herself inside. Thousands of tiny black spots were floating in front of her eyes. Most of Lex's office was glass, just like his penthouse. The place had a beautiful view, and enough natural light to make a painter get a hard-on. Lex's desk was placed in the very center of the room, his chair with its back to the glaring morning light. His face, looking up from whatever it was he was working on, was a pale oval against the black leather of the chair and cast in shadow by the light surrounding him.

"Hey Chloe," he said, smiling, then furrowed his brow as she slammed the door closed behind her. She had one second to see his face pale and his eyes show first alarm, then fear, and then a flit op pain that turned into defeat—then his mask dropped down and all she saw was controlled politeness.

"I gather something upset you?" he asked.

His even tone made her even angrier.

"Like hell something upset me!" she grated out through her sore throat, and she flung the copy of the Cradle Cancer file on top of his desk. "This did."

He made no move to pick it up, keeping his eyes on her instead.

"What is it?"

"It's proof!" she cried. "Proof of LuthorCorp's connection to Cradle Cancer, and proof of you, you!! getting rid of the evidence! God damn it, Lex, I asked you! When Edge had shot you and you were in hospital I asked you, did you have anything to do with this and you SWORE to me that you didn't! You swore it! Even when Edge pointed a gun at you you said it wasn't true, and it fucking was!!"

"Where'd you get this?" He still hadn't looked at the file. His voice was slow and flat—and it suddenly occurred to her that once again, she had no clue what was going on inside of him. This wasn't the man she knew anymore, not even the version that sometimes scared her; this was Lex Luthor as seen on TV, distant, flat, amiable. This version, she thought, was surprisingly easy to hate.

"HE did," she snapped. "Edge. He sent it to me. I only checked it because I thought he was lying—but he wasn't! He was telling the truth! And not just about Cradle Cancer, about all sorts of things. You had people tortured—there was a sound file, and it was awful!"

Lex's TV face displayed controlled shock. "I never tortured people! How on earth did you..."

"I heard it, Lex! I _heard_ it!" She slapped her hand down on the still-closed file. "You worked together with someone who made a mistake, and those people died screaming!"

"That wasn't..." Lex started, still calm, portcullis after portcullis slamming down behind his eyes until she wasn't even sure there was anything but an automaton sitting in that chair. So cold. So…inhuman. She wanted him to reel back in shock and stutter, like he had done on that sound file, but even imagining that he could lose his cool was almost impossible.

It made her want to hit him, hard.

"Lex, I heard it with my own ears! Stop LYING to me! How many people died that way, huh? I mean, you gave that man, Shaw, another chance to mess people up—I heard you say that, right at the end of the fragment."

"I did not…" Lex began without raising his voice, and she all but screamed,

"Stop LYING TO ME! You're always lying! You never stop, you just go on and on and on! Edge had a gun pointed at me and you called him a liar! And he _knew_! He knew YOU were the one lying, he had all that evidence of all those horrors—and all those children! God, you're walking around like you're some kind of savior and you're responsible in the first place! How can you DO that? How can you stand to BE that way?

And how DARE you play with MY life when some maniac kidnaps you, and me, and holds a fucking gun to my face?!"

Even as those words left her mouth she could feel her anger heat up to a boiling rage. Because he _had_ played with her life. Keeping secrets was one thing, endangering other people and then assuring them that you were innocent, while as a matter of fact the homicidal lunatic shooting you full of holes was being more honest than you were

yourself was quite another. Just like not telling was one thing, while flat-out lying to someone you claimed you loved's face was another.

"I would not have let him hurt you," Lex said quietly.

"Yeah?" she snarled. "Really? How? You were doing a pretty good job taunting him—and let's not forget the magnificent shape you were in after he left!"

"Then what would you have had me do?" Lex asked, still so goddamned calm and reasonable. "Tell him yes, I covered up any connection between my company and the Kansas Agricultural Society, and ask him to forgive me?" At least he wasn't prevaricating. Instead of making her feel better, it made her feel even worse. The fact that he didn't even bother trying to prove she was wrong—thereby proving without a doubt that Edge really was right—made her gut twist, both with rage and the pain of love suddenly dying. "Of course I lied," he continued. "It didn't matter what I would have said; he'd have shot me anyway."

"But you didn't have to lie to me."

"No?" A stiff smile jerked up the corners of his mouth.

"No!" Chloe screamed. "I'd have understood! I'd have…ok, I'd have been mad, but I'd have got it, I'm not stupid! I'd have understood!"

"Would you? You don't seem very understanding to me now."

"Because you LIED about it!"

"Perhaps I had a good reason to lie," Lex said softly—not the soft of cowed, the soft of reasoning. "Perhaps I had a good reason to provoke Edge too—perhaps that reason was you NOT finding out about this. Tell me, how did Edge contact you? And why did you…"

"This is not about Edge!" Chloe hissed. "It's about you lying to me, and to the rest of the world about saving children while you are the one who got them killed in the first place!"

"I never…" Lex said again, but she wouldn't let him finish.

"I'm going to publish this," she snapped, and he shut his mouth and fell silent. For one moment he just stared at her, expressionless like a statue, and then a brief flicker of panic flashed over his face.

"You can't do that. My father will kill you."

The skin of her cheeks prickled as the blood drained from her face. "Are you threatening me?"

"Am I threat…No!" He hushed his voice. "No. I am warning you. Hell, Chloe, I l-…" Again he fell silent, composing himself to perfect calm. "You can't publish…whatever is in here." He gestured at the copy on his desk without touching it. "Whatever it is, it won't hold up in court. I made sure of that."

"Did you, now," Chloe snarled.

"Yes," Lex said firmly, "I did. All you'll do is stir up a lot of trouble, especially for yourself. Please, Chloe, don't do this. I won't be able to protect you if you attack me or LuthorCorp—my father won't let you go through with that."

"You mean YOU won't let you go through with that."

"No," Lex said, "I mean my father won't let you go through with that. He'll kill you, Chloe. And I won't be able to stop him. Not if you attack me."

"It won't be just you I'll be exposing," Chloe snapped. "Your entire, filthy, corrupt, deceitful rotten company's going to the scaffold."

Lex rose from his chair, stance easy, face blank, more intimidating than his slender body should be capable of. "Chloe…you really don't want to do that."

"And what are you going to do about it?" she hissed back. "Huh? Are you going to kill me? Or just sic your dad on me?"

"I will never hurt you," Lex said, and for a second she thought she recognized him again, but she was too furious to try and hold on to that particular Lex.

_Two-faced bastard. What? Thirty-faced bastard!_ There was no end to the pantomime he was playing; behind every mask there was another one.

She drew herself up straight, pointed to the file on his desk. He was only a head taller than her, not like Clark, who towered over her head and shoulders, but still she had to resist the urge to step away from him, out of his reach. "Read that," she said. "And then tell me again why you needed to lie to me. Next week, you won't have to lie to anyone anymore. It'll be all over the papers. And don't tell me I 'don't want to do this'! I do! I've wanted to do this ever since you sacked my dad—and guess what, now I can!"

"Chloe…" Lex started, but she was through with this. What was worse, her energy was running out. Behind her anger, tears were crawling up her throat, and the last thing she wanted was to start crying in front of him. He might think that those tears were for him and she'd be damned if she ever cried another tear for Lex bloody Luthor.

"Read it!" she screamed, stamped her foot on the ground and left the room, slamming the door behind her as she fled.

TBC


	27. Chapter 27

Hello people

Hello people! As always, thank you kind people for your reviews! Paris was lovely, and I managed to steer clear of the dreaded Mona Lisa—whom I saw before, anyway. Give me Winged Victory in her stead anytime! Now THAT's a statue I should have mentioned…

On with the storm:

Twenty-seven: In which Lex copes in Luthor fashion

Any person looking into Lex's office would think he was studying a business proposal, and that the proposal in question was the cause of the dimple between his eyebrows and the dilation of his pupils. Anyone looking closer would have seen that the hand holding his pen was trembling ever so slightly, and that his ordinary pallor (not as noticeable in the winter as it was in the summer) had now spread to his lips, leaving him completely colorless. That person might then have concluded that the proposal was a very bad one, and that the thoughts in Lex Luthor's head concerned some kind of retaliation…

While as a matter of fact Lex was as close to gibbering dread as he had ever been. Behind his impassive features his mind was running around in circles screaming bloody murder, much like a child lost in a forest—and using about the same expressions.

_Why_? he kept repeating to himself as he stared, unseeing, at the file in front of him. _Why did you do this? Why did you listen to him? You said you'd never listen to him. So why did you keep this from me, why did you betray me like that? _

_I thought she loved me! Why did she do what HE wanted, after everything he did? He SHOT me! _

_He used you—he used you again, just now, and WHY did you let him? I thought you said you understood me, what I was, what I do… So why, _why_ did you listen to Edge, and why do you hate me now? I haven't changed. Nothing has changed. Why are you so pent on ruining me? You said you loved me! You can't publish anything of that, Dad would kill you. God, you can't publish that! How could I protect you? _

_Why did she read those things? How did he get them? _

_Why do you want to do this to me? I love you. I want to keep you safe. How can I keep you safe if you publish this? _

_Can I stop her? How can I stop her? Should I stop her? I can't let her finish me like that…Christ, Dad will kill her. He'll kill her! Why did she DO this!? Why would she WANT to do this?_

He blinked, feeling his eyes burn—not with tears but because he'd forgotten to blink for the past five minutes. He was far too confused for tears. There was a sick feeling in his stomach, and apart from his stupid parroting thoughts his head seemed hollow like a wishing well. Echo, echo, echo. But tears, no. Tears required pain and he was feeling quite numb.

_Today's weather forecast: Clear blue skies with an occasional flash of lightning._

He looked down on the copies she had tossed onto his desk: a folder filled with emails and documents and test results. Emails between two scientists, one from LuthorCorp and one from the Kansas Agricultural Society, discussing delayed test results. There was a copy of a shipping note of a container of EF-345-T, to be used during irrigation. Edge had even managed to get one of Lex's own emails, the one telling his chief to annihilate any left-over fertilizer (EF-345-T) because it was hazardous.

Every step of the process had been followed, documented, printed out. Edge had gathered everything together—and while not everything would hold up in court, Lex wasn't so sure the combination of all these files wasn't enough to get him convicted, especially because of that one personal email Edge had gotten hold of.

Of course he could always deny everything, and let his lawyers settle it—but if Chloe had this much on Cradle Cancer, where he'd been so very careful to cover his tracks…what else had Edge given her?

She'd mentioned Shaw—it had to be the incident with Shaw. She had said something about hearing them scream…how was that possible? He hadn't even had cameras installed, let alone microphones, so how had she gotten any tape of that? Had Edge somehow managed to install recording devices without his knowledge? If so, how? Had Shaw felt the need to get some auditory material to put in his ipod—the sick bastard? And how much had been recorded?

If she had proof of the Regrowth Project, did she have material on the other projects too? Did she have anything on film? The monkey project? The Kryptonite base? What, exactly, did she know? And what could he do to get it away from her?

"Lex."

_I must hire someone to steal it back—no, that won't work, she'll have made copies and put them away—I would. What can I do? What can I do? Take her out? No. No, god, I can't do that, never do that. But what do I do?_

"Lex? Sir?"

He started, shocked out of his inner ramblings. Mary was standing in the doorway, a concerned frown on her stern face.

"Mary." He swallowed his terror, managed a normal tone of voice. "I'm sorry, I didn't hear you."

"I'm just calling to say that Mister Sandford has arrived." Sandford, Sandford…Who was that again? "From Shell Asia," Mary reminded him. "The Oman pipeline expert. I put him in the conference room. He brought two advisors. I've already asked Carter to meet them there."

"Ah. Thank you." Echo, echo, echo.

"Are you quite alright, sir?" she asked, her frown deepening.

_Just struck by the lightning I should have seen coming but had somehow forgotten about._

"Yes. Yes, of course. I was just caught up in something." His lips were cold and stiff as he tried to curve them into a semblance of a smile.

"Would you like a quick cup of coffee?"

_Do we have vodka? How about Prozac?_ His fingers were still shaking, hidden in the clench of his fist."Yes," he said, "that would be nice."

"It's coming right up," Mary said. She turned on her heel and left him, not willing to waste time on sympathy he didn't want.

When she was gone, Lex got up and entered his private bathroom to splash some water into his face. As he hung over the basin, he wondered if he was going to be sick; his stomach heaved and icy quivers starting at the base of his spine made his teeth chatter. God, he was scared. More scared than he'd ever been before, and for the very first time in his life, he didn't know how to make it go away.

_How can I stop her?_ his mind asked yet again, as relentless as Edison's recording of Mary had a little lamb. _How can I save her, if she brings this out? How can I save myself, and my company? I should have run after her, explained things to her, but would she have listened? And what could I have said to make her change her mind? _Nothing. He knew by experience, far too much experience, that once people had decided to judge him, there was nothing he could do to change it. Not until some third party told them to recall their judgment. Fat chance of that; he didn't have any promising third parties willing to stand up for him. _What does she have—and was she really speaking the truth?_ he wondered._ Is she really going to sacrifice me? Just like that? She saved my life, can she really mean to destroy me? How can I stop her? How can I stop her?!_

Pressing cold wet fingers against his throbbing temples he leaned his forehead against the mirror, forcing himself to take a few deep, steadying breaths. Panicking wouldn't do anyone any good, and he had a business to run. Maybe she wouldn't betray him after all. Maybe she was just angry, just threatening him because he had hurt her feelings. She hadn't looked well, she'd been hoarse and her nose was red—maybe she was sick. She'd had a cold when he called her yesterday. Maybe she'd reconsider when she felt better.

Maybe pigs would one day fly down from the roof to eat bread from his hands.

An inarticulate moan escaped him, and he immediately slapped himself in the face. _Stop it. Get a hold of yourself. Whatever Chloe will do, you'll deal with it._

_But it hurts!_ something inside of him wailed pathetically. _It hurts just as much as the first time, and the second, and the third! Why do people always leave me? Why can't they just accept me the way I am to them, instead of what I do in the name of progress?_

"Because that's my fate," he told himself. "To be betrayed by everyone I love and to always be alone." At times, saying those words made him feel like a modern James Dean, a rebel without a cause, a loner against the world. Tragic yet cool. Today it made him feel sick to his stomach. He didn't want to be alone anymore; he'd just rediscovered how wonderful it was NOT to be alone.

The skin on his right cheek stung; when he looked into the mirror he saw, to his dismay, the print of his own hand stand out in clear red on his pale face. "Oh for fuck's sake…"

He spent the next few minutes splashing cold water into his face and rubbing his cheeks vigorously with a towel that was far too soft for that purpose.

By the time he was sitting behind his desk again, face flushed and tingling, his natural cynicism had resurfaced, more bitter than usual, but blissfully calming after what had almost become a break-down. As long as he could laugh at himself, things might turn out more or less alright.

It was important to think that way.

Mary entered with his cup of coffee. Her cool demeanor as well served to soothe his jittery nerves. "Do you have your papers?" she asked. He patted the folder on his desk. Chloe's copies were lying next to it, the top of it blank and unrevealing. The page right beneath that first page read 'Cradle Cancer' in big print, but for some reason she had added that extra page—he wondered why.

"Yes. Thanks." She left again and he sipped his coffee, grateful for the caffeine, and casually shoved the copies into a drawer and locked it—he wanted to have a look at it later today, in case it'd be presented as evidence in court, later. He didn't want to be surprised by any unfamiliar material Chloe might bring up.

The pleasant warmth of the coffee turned to acid in his guts, making them coil and clench into a painful ball, and for one second he thought he was going to chuck up after all…but fortunately the feeling passed, although it left him somewhat unsteady.

_Work through it, _his father's voice admonished coldly. _Stop being such a weakling. You can deal with the girl later, after you've dealt with your business._

Taking a deep breath, Lex finished his coffee and got to his feet, moving with an ease that betrayed the turmoil in his head. The skin on his face had cooled and hopefully paled to its usual color. With a bit of luck, no one would notice anything.

_Who needs luck? No one ever notices anything. All I need to do is pretend._ Well, he could do that. Fooling people, lying to them, pretending he was someone different than the person they thought he was…it was second nature to him.

He straightened his tie, curled his mouth in a half-smile and left his office, his heart beating heavily in his chest.

Lex, Chloe thought as she lay in a pitiful heap in her bed, was very lucky she was feeling so horrible today. If she'd been feeling better the Daily Planet would have published Edge's collection that very evening. Yes, he was very lucky she was feeling too low to power up her laptop and secrete all that Luthor shit on her word processor.

He was SO goddamn lucky she was feeling so sick.

She had spent most of the morning, after coming home again, collapsed in angry tears, heartache and snot, and had finally fallen asleep with swollen eyes, a clogged nose and a pounding headache.

Now her head was a little better, and apart from the occasional unexpected tear her water levels seemed to have dropped again, but she was still feeling too sick to do more than drift up and down between her bed and the couch, watch a little TV and doze to the sound of Portishead.

Once, she tried to read more of Edge's files, but reading intensified the pain in her head and made her eyes water, so she stopped after only a page of transcribed telephone conversation between Lionel and some doctor. The conversation seemed unpleasant to her (she didn't even need to hear Lionel's voice to pick up the subtle threat in his speech), but then she doubted Lionel was capable of holding pleasant conversation—and besides, what did she care about Lionel? She knew he was despicable. It was his son who made her feel this way, and she couldn't bear to find out more, even while Lex's role in Edge's bin of dirty laundry was the only thing she wanted to know about.

Her thoughts lacked logic. Therefore, it was better to give her overtaxed brain some rest and try to think of other things until she felt better.

Of course, the only thing she could think of was Lex and his lies. Not even Xena could distract her from the dull anger that would flare up in her belly like heartburn from time to time. And while she ached to tell someone, Lois, or Clark, or Lana, and even had her phone in her hand a few times, her finger somehow refused to press the dial button.

She kept expecting him to call her.

She wanted him to call her, if only so she could throw down the receiver—or, in this grand age of cell phones, plant her thumb on the disconnect button.

She wanted him to plead and beg and tell her he was sorry he lied, and then tell him it was too late, that he was a fucking bastard and she never wanted to see his shining head again.

Most of all, she wanted him to call and try to make up again. The feminist in her laughed derisively at that particular desire, and if she concentrated hard enough on the horror she'd felt when she listened to that wav file, she could laugh at it, too. Her laughter didn't stop her from putting the cell in the middle of the table and urging it to make a sound.

When her phone finally did ring, at five-ten, she jumped up to snatch it from the table so hastily she almost tripped and broke her neck. With equal amounts of fear, eagerness and nervousness she checked the display for Spaghetti.

But it wasn't Lex. It was Lois.

She fell back on the couch, uncertain whether she was relieved or terribly disappointed. _You're relieved, _her inner Virginia Woolf decided. _You don't want that asshole to call you._ Chloe knew she should agree with this subconscious statement. She still felt like crying when she answered the call.

"Hey Chloe," Lois' brash, sympathetic voice was like a balm. "How are you, sweetie?"

Chloe snirfed, running over with mucus and self-pity. "Horrible," she whined.

"Oh, you poor thing! Do you need me to come by and make you soup?"

Chloe managed to produce a watery chuckle. "I'm not _that_ sick."

"Oh ye of little faith in my cooking abilities."

"Lois, you can't even make toast without creating charcoal." Lois did have a point though; Chloe wasn't sure what (if any) American meal was hiding out in her pantry. "Really, I'll manage. I still have some…" She ambled to the kitchen to check her fridge. It was pitifully empty. "…yogurt. Yum."

"Damn," Lois said. "You really do need shopping."

Chloe blew her nose and hobbled back to her bed, where she lay down with the hand holding the crumpled tissue on her forehead. "You weren't actually planning to help out?" she guessed.

"Well…I am very willing, but I'm kind of stuck at the office. That conference? It was a bitch! And they didn't even give me any samples, so I'll have to drug Bushwhack by slipping sleeping pills into his beer. And now Perry wants it in tomorrow's morning issue, and Clark's being an absolute ASS…Oh. Wait. I can send Clark. Clark'd probably love to help out. And that would profit both of us. He's annoying the hell out of me."

"How so?" nuzzled Chloe. She wondered if Clark was standing close by, say, at the other side of the room, and if he had caught Lois say his name and was now listening in to their conversation.

"Aaawww…I don't know. Wait a sec." She hollered something about a filing cabinet to a person in the distance. "Here I am again. I don't know. He's kind of, you know, twitchy, and he's making everybody twitchy as well. Not sure what it is exactly—well, I've got this theory. I think Lana isn't letting him get any."

"Whuh?" Chloe mumbled, her stuffed head having trouble processing Lois' waterfall-speech.

"Just what I said," Lois said. "He's just emitting this 'I'm not getting any and I'm really hot and bothered' vibe. It has all my female colleagues trailing after him like tomcats—which is really the wrong way around. I've always thought that…"

"Lois," Chloe protested, "I'm really not interested in Clark's state of mind."

"It isn't his state of mind I'm talking about."

"I'm sure you're just imagining things."

Why did everybody think she wanted to know the details of the sex-life of Clark Kent and Lana Lang? Especially since she'd more or less murdered her own blooming sex-life in its proverbial cradle? A sudden pang of loss made her eyes burn; not because of the sex, not in the state she was in at the moment, but because of the loss of care and security, the knowledge of being loved. _Not enough to tell me the fucking truth! _She brutally shoved the feeling back under the cotton in her head.

"I don't think so," Lois persisted. "I know men, and I know that vibe. I wonder…did they have a fight?" She sounded positively gleeful.

"I don't think so," Chloe said. Lana had called her earlier that day because Clark had told her she was ill, and there had been no sign of prissiness that often tainted the soft lilt of Lana's voice when she was pissed off. "I really don't care. Besides, if he's horny, I'm probably not the best choice for a visit."

"Uh, what do you mean?"

"Sick, helpless woman all alone?"

"Oh, that way." She sounded relieved. "Yes, you have a point. On the other hand…Honey, you can't live on yogurt alone. Or will Lex come by to feed you?"

She almost told her then. She was _this_ close to breaking down in tears of rage and wailing her accusations through the phone…but something, somehow, held her back. "No," she said, sniffing and wiping her nose. "He's busy."

"Bastard," Lois said without rancor. "I'll send Clark, then."

"But I really…"

"You must eat. Twinkies. And that odd British tomato soup. It's the perfect cure for a cold. Oh jeez, there he goes again. You'd think women had more sense. Look, Chlo, I have to go but you can expect Clark with a basket of get-well groceries in an hour or so, ok?"

_Resistance if futile. You will be assimilated._

"Ok," Chloe murmured. She hung up and wondered why the hell she hadn't told Lois that being a bastard was the very least of Lex's failings?

Either Lois' powers of persuasion were even more amazing than Chloe had given her credit for, or Clark was as relieved to get away from her and the Planet as she was to see him go; whatever the reason, half an hour later her doorbell rang and when she opened the door it was to six foot eight of male perfection hidden behind three paper bags filled with fruit, tins, bread and chocolate ice cream.

"Hi Chloe," Clark said, blurring in and depositing the supplies in the kitchen, then blurring back and hugging her before she could even close the door again. His hug was uncharacteristically hard—not as much tight as careless—and he released her so abruptly she almost fell over. "How are you? Lois said you needed TLC, but I figured you could probably use vitamins more, so I brought you some stuff from the farm. And ice cream. That's Lois again. She's better at TLC than me." He gave an embarrassed chuckle and fidgeted with the zipper of his jacket.

Six foot seven inch of _twitchy_ male perfection.

_Lois was right_, Chloe thought. _He is emitting some kind of weird vibe at least…_

"So how are you?" Clark asked. "Shouldn't you sit down or something? You don't look so hot."

"I have a cold," Chloe said, a touch irritated. She plunked down in her nest of pillows and blankets. "Like half of this city. How are YOU? You're all red. Don't tell me this bug managed to infect an alien, because that would be really scary." She sniffed. "As in War of the World scary."

"Me?" Clark dropped into her only other chair, falling into a natural sprawl…that lasted all of five seconds. "I'm fine. I just ran. It's really cold—at least, I think so. Don't feel much…of temperature, I mean. Outside." He got up again. "Shall I put those away for you?"

"Nah," Chloe began, "I'll do it…" later. But Clark had already finished putting all dairy products into either fridge or freezer, everything fruit and vegetable into bowls, and every tin of soup in a neat pile on the sink before she could finish her sentence. By the time she'd come to 'later' he was already back in his seat, one leg crossed over the knee of the other, foot moving restlessly.

Chloe failed to catch a 'am not getting any' vibe, but something was amiss, that was for sure. "Clark," she probed, but he interrupted her.

"Have you seen Lex lately?"

That was the last question she'd expected him to ask. "What?" she asked, so baffled she even forget to feel sorry for herself. "No, yes, this morning, but…Why?" Then her anger came flooding back. "You should stay away from Lex," she said vehemently. "You were right, he's a lying sob, and those secrets you always warned me about…"

"Secrets," Clark repeated, but she didn't think the first part of her outburst had registered.

"Yes," she said, "his secrets. I found out about them, Clark. Every single one of them! I got this whole fucking library of…"

"He is always keeping secrets." Clark sounded as if he were musing aloud.

"He isn't going to keep them any longer. I'm going to expose his…"

"He's always kept mine. He's known, all these years, and he never told anybody. Just like you." He focused on her, and the intensity of those greenish eyes startled her.

"Uh, Clark," she said, wiping her nose with a tissue, "I don't think we're talking about the same thing here. You were right all along. Lex is…"

"Do you know where he is?" Clark interrupted her for the sixth time. It was really starting to piss her off. "Lex, I mean?"

"No," Chloe snapped, "I don't. And I don't care. We…"

"I've got to go," Clark was out to break the latest record of not-letting-people-finish-their-sentences. He was back on his feet and at the door before she could raise her eyes, leaving her staring stupidly at the chair he'd vacated. "I'm sorry. I'm just…really busy."

"I can see that," Chloe muttered, coughing. She half and half expected him to talk over her, but he just nodded, a sheepish smile on his still-flushed face. "You sure you're ok? You and Lana, too?"

Now he smiled more widely. "Of course we're ok, why shouldn't we be? And I'm always ok. You take care of yourself, right, and eat your veggies. They're better than Twinkies when it comes to beating a cold."

"You're an organic produce vendor every inch of you, aren't you?" she asked, amused.

"Everything for a profit," Clark returned. He was fidgeting again. "I really gotta go now. See you later! Just call me if you need anything."

"Sure," Chloe said. She sneezed. "Thanks for…" But he'd cut her off for the final time, because before she had completed her thanks he was long gone. "Oookay…That was weird."

So weird, in fact, that it kept her occupied for at least ten minutes before she started thinking about Lex again.

Since worrying over the problem called Chloe Sullivan made Lex feel as if he were chewing on his own flesh, he forced himself to abandon that fruitless train of thought by burying himself in work.

After that first meeting with Shell, he organized another meeting for the following morning, and spent most of the afternoon reading up on pipelines. Then he worked through the business plans of five sister companies concerning a number of oil tankers, jetties, quay concepts and oil pipe safety measures, accepted two plans and sent one back with comments.

By four, he was faint with hunger, but when he went to the cafeteria to fetch himself something to eat, the scent of coffee made his stomach cramp with anguish, and he fled the place with a cup of soup before he embarrassed himself and started blubbering over the coffee machine.

_I really hope I'll be able to smell coffee without being reminded of that charming addiction of hers, one of these days, _he thought with bitter irony as he sat down behind his desk again, not five minutes after he had left it. Somehow, he doubted it. Helen had worn Chanel. It had taken him years before he could smell that perfume without feeling the need to bash the carrier's head in. _Life would be significantly less pleasant without coffee,_ he thought. _And it's nonsense anyway. I drank coffee this morning. Nothing wrong with it. I'm just a bit nervous, that's all. How can I stop her? Should I call her? Is she alright? Why the heck should I care? What should I say to her? She just told me she was going to destroy me. She…_

He moaned. This sucked. He wasn't used to not knowing what to do. For one tantalizing second he dreamed about walking up to her flat and shooting her in the heart with a .38. Instant death. Instant solution.

_Yeah, and afterwards, I'd put the damn gun to my own fucking head and solute that too. Of course I could save her the trouble and do that in the first place instead._

He rubbed his forehead. Murder was not an option; he'd sooner kill himself, and he wasn't planning on doing himself away. Primarily because Luthors simply didn't commit suicide; it was unprofitable. Secondarily because it was a cheap way of copping out, and Lex liked to think that he was undefeatable. He'd find a way out of this the moment the shit would hit the fan.

Until then, he'd better secure the position of LuthorCorp in the East. Taking a sip of soup, he tried to forget about coffee and went back to work.

It was almost ten when Lex, hungry and too tired to work diligently anymore, exited the elevator of his penthouse and made his way to his front door. It was only a few steps, but he managed to make the distance last almost a minute. The closer he got to his home, the more unwilling he became to enter it.

It would be private, quiet and welcoming—characteristics he usually savored. Right now, he automatically translated them to empty, hollow and sterile, which sounded quite a lot less hospitable. He was feeling miserable to the bottom of his soul. Work-related stress was something he exulted in, and even lawsuits inspired him to greatness more often than not. But the moment his heart became involved, stress stopped being stimulating and only brought him down.

_Well, at least I don't have to be afraid Edge is going to show up around the corner, _he attempted to cheer himself as he halted in front of his door and delayed finding his keys. _After all, Chloe is going to take care of me. Huh. Before today, that would be something I'd be looking forward to._

Knowing that dawdling longer would change his appearance from 'unhurried' to 'moronic', he finally fished his keys out of his pockets and opened the door. Because of the timer the lights were on, allowing him to see every empty inch of his apartment.

Lex sighed. He closed the door behind him, put his back against it and dropped his laptop on the floor.

Something in his shirt pocket buzzed and vibrated against his chest; he unbuttoned his coat and checked the display of his cell. It said _Hartlow_, and he frowned when the name didn't automatically ring any bells. Then he clicked his tongue and flipped the phone open: John Hartlow, one of the two new LuthorCorp employees he'd studied with during his short-lived interest in criminal law.

"Lex Luthor."

"Lex." John Hartlow was already slurring. "Hey man. Where are you?"

Lex looked around him. "I'm in Metropolis. Why?"

"You've kind of been giving Felix and me the cold shoulder. We were wondering if you had something to do tonight—we were planning to head out to the Unicorn tonight, for old time's sake, you know—and we were wondering if you could abandon your business long enough to hang out with us for a few hours."

Lex hesitated. John pleaded, "Come on, Lex, just a few hours. I finally managed to get Felix away from his happy family, but without you he'll probably leave again before twelve. You know the way he is. We haven't seen you in ages."

Distraction. It WAS very welcome. He took in the big dark square that was the glass wall of his sitting room, the clean, vacant furniture, the gleaming bare tables and made his decision. He had no desire whatsoever to exchange small talk with John Hartlow, who was probably already half drunk and who would only become more embarrassing over the evening, but it beat being alone.

"Sure. Shall we meet up at the club in half an hour, then?"

"You're coming? Great. Yeah, ten thirty's great. D'you think you can still get us in within ten minutes?"

"If I can't, the tab's on me," Lex said. He tossed his coat and the phone on the bed and went to his closet to find himself another pair of clothes. Black, he was in the mood for black. Black jeans, creaking new because he never wore jeans. The Unicorn, The Midnight Unicorn as it was called officially, however, wasn't the place for slacks. Black long-sleeved shirt, something tight and sleek enough to be fashionable but not tight and sleek enough to be vulgar. When he was finished he looked a little like a cat-burglar, or maybe a ninja. Or maybe a mime. That was appropriate.

He took only another minute to munch an apple and take a shot of whiskey, then he shrugged back into his coat, made sure he had the keys to his Ferrari, and left his silent apartment.

Lex was able to get Felix Brockx and John Hartlow past the hulking bouncer of the Unicorn within two minutes. As a matter of fact, the moment he lifted his head from his up-turned collar and made eye contact with said Hercules he was ushered inside as if he were royalty, and so were the other two men. He still thought the tab was probably going to be put on his bill; if the bouncer recognized him, so would the barkeep, and everyone would automatically assume he'd pay for everything. Lex couldn't say he was worried. Even if they'd order Champagne he doubted he'd even notice the amount on his monthly bank writ.

John Hartlow, as Lex had noticed at the New Year's Party, hadn't changed a bit in seven years. Sure, he was older, and his black hair had pulled back slightly from his forehead, but he was still the same handsome, sharp, slick, sweet-talking alcoholic schmuck Lex had met at university.

Felix, quieter, more studious, had been mellowed even further by marriage and the arrival of a baby boy—now two years old, he told Lex. As smart as his study mate, and of the same age, Felix nevertheless seemed both older and dull, with a somewhat slow, shy manner of smiling and a light pink complexion that easily flushed bright red. Lex thought it rather funny the two of them, John and Felix, had remained friends over the years; they were as different as day and night. The reason their friendship survived soon became clear, though, or rather he remembered by seeing it happen again.

John's nervous tension, his irrepressible energy swept Felix along and pushed him to a higher level, and the effort of keeping Felix there, in turn, took the edge off Johns ADHD behavior, rendering him vastly amusing instead of horribly annoying, and so both parties benefited from each other's company. John erased Felix's tedium, and Felix made John bearable.

As of yet, John was still running on hyper speed, only slightly tampered by his obvious tipsiness. "It hasn't changed a bit!" he exclaimed as he threw himself down on a round leather seat situated around a round table. "Away for god knows how many years and the Unicorn's still the same! And they still recognized you, too, Lex. Now that's what I call a good head for customers! Or do you still frequent this joint?"

Lex sat down opposite of him. The leather felt cold through the thin fabric of his shirt; no warm bodies had occupied these seats this evening before him. The place was still relatively empty, only small groups of people were littered around the place, and most of the girls gliding to and fro on the thumping beat of the music were waitresses and other personnel. It was still very early, of course, and on a Thursday night only the rich and worthless came to waste their time in a place like this; ordinary people had to work the following morning. The rich and worthless never started partying before two am.

_I wonder if you can arrange parties in prison,_ Lex thought, and despite his sarcasm he had to swallow before he could answer John's question.

"No. I haven't been here since I was exiled to Smallville. Didn't feel the need to come back when I left it, either. And as for people recognizing me, I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but if people, bouncers in particular, don't recognize my face they must be analphabetic, deaf and blind, and those would be rather serious shortcomings for someone who's supposed to check people's identification, don't you think?"

John smirked. "You never had any problems getting into clubs, not even when you were eighteen."

"It's hard to pin an age to a bald head," Lex shrugged.

"No," Felix spoke up, his voice just a trifle too slow to be pleasant to listen to. John raised his hand to call over one of the pretty young waitresses. "No, I don't think it had anything to do with age. It was a way of carrying yourself that you had. You still have it, some kind of…I don't know. Godfather vibe. And you can pull it off really well. It always worked when you tried to bluff your way into places you weren't supposed to be admitted yet."

"A Godfather vibe," Lex drawled. "Wow. And here I was thinking it was because I faked my ID card and bribed the bouncers." A scantily dressed girl arrived in a cloud of sweet perfume and Bubblelicious. "What do you want, Felix? Beer? Or one of those crazy cocktails you used to poison yourself with?"

"Gin," Felix said. "Make it a double. On the rocks."

"Me too," said Lex. "And keep it coming. John?"

John smacked the girl on the hot pants-clad bum. "What kind of cocktails do you serve these days, honey?"

"We-ell…" she moved her chewing gum from her left to her right cheek. "We have thirty-six, so if you want me to start listin' them all…" She blew a bubble as big as a tennis ball and managed to pop it and suck it in without covering her entire face with gum. Admirable.

John laughed. "You know what? Bring me the first five on your list and then we'll see where we'll go from there on."

"Sure thang, doll," she twanged, and turned around on legs up to her armpits lengthened even further by stiletto heels.

Without those heels, Lex figured she must be about five foot tall. Yeah, ten inches should be about accurate. He shook his head at John's expectant leer. "She's barely legal."

"Who cares about that? You can't feel that, and she's gorgeous. I wouldn't mind. Did you see those legs of hers?"

"I don't know," Felix said slowly. "I used to use a particular type of condoms that smelled of strawberry. I get the feeling that kissing her would make me feel like I'm fellating those condoms."

John snorted. "You're married. You can't comment on girls anymore."

"Hey! That I'm married doesn't mean I'm a castrate or a monk! I'm only saying that I'd like my women to smell and taste like women instead of strawberry-flavored rubbers."

"I'd like my women to be able to talk like people with a higher IQ than the average carrot," Lex said. "And 'doll'? Please."

"That's right," John said. "You were married as well. Twice, if I recall correctly. In Smallville."

"Yup."

"Divorced twice, too."

"Yup."

"Interesting people, in Smallville?"

"Very," Lex said. Why on earth was John asking about Smallville? Lex had been back for four years. The soap opera that was his married life had been spread out over every newspaper, magazine and glossy, why would he possibly want to talk about that?

"Is it as much of a freak show as you thought it was?" John asked on, undaunted by Lex's short replies. "I mean, when you told us your father was going to send you to Smallville, you made it sound like some kind of circus town." He grinned widely. "Were your wives freaks?"

"Pretty much," Lex said coldly. "One had scissors for hands and the other one changed into a wolf every full moon."

"Really? Cool."

"Yes, very, until she tried to kill me," Lex grated out. "As I doubt you could have missed when it was on the news. Can we please not discuss Smallville? I'm finished with Smallville. I only come there to inspect the fertilizer plant, so if you don't mind…" He fell silent as the long-legged girl returned with a tray full of colorful cocktails and two double gins on the rocks.

"Thank you, honey!" John pushed a ten dollar note into the girl's cleavage and swatted at her backside again when she left, but this time she either saw it coming, or was tired of being smacked and neatly swerved her hips to avoid his hand. He turned back to Lex, raised his hands. "Don't bite my head off, man, I'm only joking. Jeez, you really need to lighten up. You work too hard. All work and no play makes Lex a dull Luthor, and I'd really hate it if you became dull."

"I," Lex said, scraping his nerves together and raising his glass, "will never be dull. I can promise you that."

"Yeah?" John raised a hideous purple cocktail with a decorated straw and a tiny pink parasol. "I'll drink to that."

They all raised their glass, but when John thrust out his glass to clink it with the other two Felix drew back his and said "I refuse to touch glasses with that concoction. It'd be a worse sin than murder."

"Oh come on!"

"Actually," Lex said with a grin, "I agree." He took a large swallow and relished the slow burn of it in his empty stomach. _Who needs food when there is alcohol?_

"So Lex," John asked, sucking noisily on the straw. "Have you started up any interesting projects lately?" Paranoia flared up—_why's he ask that? Does he know something? Is he in league with Edge?_—but John had already turned to Felix, continuing, "Do you remember that distillation contraption he set up during second term? What was it you were brewing again, Lex? Rhubarb brandy?" and he relaxed again.

"Rhubarb and carrot. It wasn't half bad, actually."

"Are you kidding me? It was awful! We were lucky we didn't end up blind and insane."

"Speak for yourself," Felix muttered. He perked up. "Say, speaking of rhubarb, do you remember that post-grad guy from Zagreb…"

For almost an hour they sat around the table, steadily consuming alcohol ('Keep it coming' Lex had said, and the staff took care to do precisely that) and one pound of spicy peanuts, remembering old stories, retelling them, redefining each other by conduct and conversation.

The outcome of Lex's redefinition of both John and Felix reminded him why he hadn't kept in contact after he broke off his studies. They were good guys, really, but only when you wanted to spend the night clubbing. John was too loud. Felix was too quiet. The combination was entertaining, but only in a club where there were lots of distractions. Still, their presence kept his fears at bay and that, he thought, was what he needed at the moment. So he stayed. And stayed. And stayed.

"Smoke?" John asked, offering him a cigarette. Lex shook his head. "You _quit_?"

"I can't afford such an expensive addiction," Lex drawled, and they all laughed and no one asked questions. The fact was that if Lex didn't smoke for three days, his healing system kicked the habit and after a couple of times he'd become tired of the horror of the first three cigarettes required to reestablish a healthy craving. Abductors weren't in the habit of providing their victims with cigarettes. Lex had given up on smoking after abduction number two. He'd never really missed it much. By that time, he'd developed more interesting addictions.

As the hour grew later, the club became darker, occasionally lit with stroboscopic bursts of light that seemed to slow down motion. The music changed as well, became heavier and louder as the club began to grow crowded. While the level of alcohol in his blood increased, Lex's pupils widened, letting in the dark and the slowing light, letting it fill up the echoing hollowness inside his head.

He decided he liked stroboscopic light. He liked watching the girls dance in that light and see their hair seemingly stand still in mid-stream in the air. He was mesmerized by the play of that light over John's damp face and neck as he tilted back his head to blow out smoke through his mouth and nostrils—John was the kind of man who always felt soft and slightly moist to the touch, as if always covered with a thin layer of Vaseline. If it hadn't been for his Mephistophelean eyebrows, shaped like perfect, black arches, he might actually have looked soft, Lex realized. It surprised him that he had never noticed that softness before.

Lex's eyes felt glued to the slow motion of Felix's hand as he placed his glass back on the table. The light glinted bright and harsh on his openly displayed wedding ring, on the tiny hairs on his wrist, on the watch showing the time of night in flickers: 03:13, 03:14, 03:15.

"Gotta take a piss," John announced, breaking Lex's spell, getting up and crushing the butt of his cig in the ash tray. "I'll try to collect some girls on my way back, yeah?" He was gone before either Lex or Felix could reply, and they gazed at one another with crooked smiles.

They sat in silence for some time, then Felix gestured at Lex's shoulder. "You're all healed, then?" he asked. "From that attack? When was it, just before Christmas?"

Lex nodded. "I'm fine."

"From what I saw on television I gathered it was pretty serious."

"I lost a lot of blood," Lex said evasively. "That's all. He didn't hit any vital points."

"And you always did heal fast."

Lex bristled. He chugged back the last of his sixth double gin. "No faster than anyone else." He felt Felix's eyes travel over his face and hoped, prayed that he wouldn't start about Edge. He was only just starting to relax. Getting shot by Edge—and subsequently being saved by Chloe Sullivan—was the last topic on earth he wanted to talk about. Noticing the cocktails John hadn't finished were not lined up correctly, he reached out one finger and carefully pushed them back in line: the two blue ones aligned according to height of parasol and the other two by color and shape of glass.

Felix gave a soft snort. "You've changed," he said. "At the New Year's party I thought you were exactly the same person you were six, seven years ago, but you have changed after all."

"Of course I've changed," Lex said, and took a sip of one of those blue cocktails. He grimaced. It tasted of artificial banana-blueberry-apple sweets. "We've all gotten older, and we've all changed. You have to, or you end up like one of those dinosaurs in a tar pit: frozen in place and unaware of the fact that you're slowly choking to death."

"John hasn't changed," Felix said. Both their eyes drifted over to where John, either finished surprisingly early or having forgotten he was off for the bathroom, was draping himself over a blonde girl in a tiny red dress. She couldn't be older than twenty-one, and was probably younger. "He doesn't even see the tar pit," he continued. "All he sees is female dinosaurs."

Lex laughed. Despite the horrible taste he finished off the blue cocktail and picked up the next one. It was pinkish-orange and was decorated with pieces of fresh pineapple, strawberries and feathers. It was too sweet to his taste but not as vile as the other cocktail. It tasted of raspberries. He drained it in two big swallows. "There is something to be said for that kind of attitude."

"Of course," Felix agreed. "But, like you said, we all get older. At one point, you stop being a Casanova and you become just a sad loser. I mean," he trailed his index finger thought the condense on his glass, "I love the guy. He's my best friend. But sometimes I can't help thinking 'Grow up, man! You're almost thirty.' He's always teasing me about being a married man. Thinks I've lost my freedom. I have. I've never been happier. And it bothers me that he can't imagine being happy that way." He glanced at Lex's hands, white and bare on the dark table. "You're still single?"

"Uhuh. Why?"

"Well, there was a lot of…you know. Speculation about you and that girl who got you out of the forest, who saved your life."

"Really? Can't imagine why."

Felix seemed to pick up on his unwillingness to speak about relationships and nodded, smiling a little. "Don't you ever get tired of it?" he asked. "Having things written about you like that? Reading about yourself in the papers, being misquoted and pulled out of context and all that shit?"

Lex shrugged. "Of course I get tired of it. But it's a sacrifice you have to make if you want to be famous. I'm willing to make that sacrifice."

"Doesn't it piss you off?"

"Of course it pisses me off. I hate it when people come over to me and spit in my face because they've read somewhere that I've said or done this or that, and I haven't even done it. But hey, I forget all about that when I'm late for an appointment because I couldn't decide which of my five sport cars I wanted to drive. I'm used to it. It's worse for my friends. I can't kiss my female friends without having them bombarded the Luthor Flavor of the Month by the media." He shrugged again, and blinked blearily at the fresh glass of gin appearing in front of him. "Ah well, c'est la vie."

He regarded the ice cubes in his glass as they popped and shifted in the cool liquid. Ice cubes. Raspberry. He shook his head, took a gulp of gin. "But you. You've got a son. Bradley?" He would never, ever have called his son Bradley.

Felix swelled with paternal pride. "Yeah. He's fantastic." Lex hoped to god he wasn't going to pull pictures from his wallet—but Felix wasn't that lost a cause. "I never thought I'd say it, but having kids is…well, if you thought studying was hard, try having a son. Toddlers are…"

"Heeeere they are, gals," John brutally interrupted him, and all but pushed a creamy-skinned brunette into Lex's lap. The blonde girl in the tiny red dress was more or less tucked underneath his arm. "NOW we can get this party started! This is Christina. And THAT lovely lady, Lex, is Violetta!"

"Hi," said Violetta—whose name probably was Jane, or Mary, or Martha or something similarly unexciting. She steadied herself with one hand on the seat and one of Lex's knee, looking up at him from beneath long, curled lashes. He studied her with interest, waiting for that 'Yup, doable' sign from his brain that roused his body to the semi-hardness that made flirting so pleasurable and ultimately successful. Flawless latte skin, short black curls, broad mouth with even, white teeth. A beauty mark left on her chin. Young enough to be tight and firm enough to do without a bra under that flimsy top, but old enough to not make him feel like a cradle snatcher. _Yup_, his brain signaled. _Doable_. And then it lost all interest.

Suddenly, he was absolutely exhausted.

"Hi," he said. "Nice to meet you, Violetta. I was just leaving." 

"Oh," said Violetta, looking somewhat disappointed. "Right. Ok."

"Noo!" John cried. "You can't leave! Not now! We haven't even started dancing yet."

"I don't dance. I never dance." Not in clubs, at least. He could do a slow trot, quick step, waltz and a very passable tango, but he'd leave dancing to trance and dance to people who were comfortable with making fools of themselves. "It's late, and I have a meeting in the morning."

"But, but…" John stuttered. He held out the girl in the red dress as if it were a belatedly remembered present.

Lex laughed. He leaned over the girl to whisper in John's ear. "You keep her. Do her once for me, ok?" He clapped the man on the shoulder. "It was great seeing you guys. You too, Felix. We should do this again, sometime." Vague language. Vital when making appointments you weren't actually planning to keep.

"Actually," Felix said, getting up as well, "I've got to leave as well. I don't have a meeting but my son goes off at six-fifteen sharp, and…" But Lex had already left.

When he exited the stuffy building and the icy wind hit his face, he realized how incredibly drunk he was. By exception the sky was clear this night, and all the stars were milling around like fireflies.

_Huh. Maybe I should get a taxi._ He chuckled at himself. Luthors did not get taxis. If only he could remember what car he'd come he might even get home tonight.

TBC


	28. Chapter 28 slash!

So, this chapter

So, this chapter? Slash. R- to NC-17. Non-consented to but nevertheless not entirely unwanted. If the thought of Lex and Clark makes you sick, don't read. However, if you want to know exactly how weird Lex's brain is, and how utterly SICK the relationship between Clark and Lex is, you might bite through the Clex. Eh, and if I were ever to write that sequel, it'd be useful to know what kind of relationship they have…

Aaah well, here it is. Approach with mild caution. It doesn't seem as perverted as it is.

Twenty-eight: In which Clark pays Lex an unexpected visit

In the morning, Lex woke up feeling groggy and slow (In his own bed. He must have found his car, then, yesterday, and driven it home without running into a cop. Or maybe he had run into a cop, but had run over him before he could drag him out of the car and put him in a cell to sober up. He made a mental note to check his bumper for bloodstains).

He didn't exactly have a hangover—after all, he didn't do hangovers—but yesterday's roller coaster of emotions, combined with his lack of sleep and those glasses of muck at the club made his limbs heavy and his mind sluggish. A cup of coffee (which only made him sigh instead of tearful) and some toast and jam did only little to revive him. At least the panic was gone, covered with a layer of resigned despair and firmly repressed anxiety. He was too numb to feel fear. If he allowed himself to feel anything at all, he thought to himself as he let the hot water of the shower beat on his shoulders, he was going to have to take a shotgun to his head to make it stop. Lex Luthor might be a lot of things, but he wasn't directly suicidal.

At least, that was what he told himself. It seemed he was trying awfully hard to convince himself he wasn't about to do himself in, these days.

He toweled himself off, brushed his teeth, dressed, and had just stepped outside the door of his apartment when suddenly he wasn't holding his keys anymore

Wasn't, in fact, outside anymore

Was back inside his apartment, lying on the bed of one of his guest rooms

And Clark Kent was half lying on top of him, pinning Lex's wrists with one of his huge hands above Lex's head, much like Lex preferred to do with Chloe.

Lex blinked.

"What…?" he began, too surprised to be frightened, and Clark leaned over him and shoved his tongue into his mouth. The first thing Lex noticed, through his bewilderment at this extremely unexpected invasion, was the taste of him, and the scent; how odd it was—not unpleasant, somewhat minty and spicy, but _strange_, unlike anything he'd ever tasted and smelled before. The second thing was that his body immediately, and disproportionately, reacted to it: he gave a whimper of protest as he grew painfully hard in the space of two seconds.

_He's not here because of Chloe, or he'd have thrown me against the wall instead of on a bed,_ he figured.

_Why the hell is he here? Ah, dumb question. _

_No, excellent question!_

What is this? Is he in heat or something? Why the hell am I…Is he aware of the effect he has on me?

Apparently, Clark was pretty much aware of the effect he was having. His one free hand drifted to the fastening of Lex's slacks which, in turn, shocked Lex out of his paralysis.

_What the hell is he doing?_

"Clark!" he yelled, pulling away from that strange-tasting mouth, and tried to yank his arms out of Clark's grip. To no avail; as he'd known. Despite the fact that he HAD known, he now began to panic at his vulnerability, and struggled harder. "Clark, what the fuck are you doing!? Let me go!"

"Don't pretend you're in control here, Lex," Clark said huskily. "You know you aren't."

He put his hand on Lex's heaving torso, effectively stopping his escapist contortions; with a subtle move of his knee, he trapped Lex's legs as well. His hand was so hot Lex felt it like a miniature hot water bottle on his chest. "Just relax. It shouldn't hurt you, not much anyway, and even if it does, you'll heal, and I'll make it as good for you as I can, so stop struggling. You've done this before, right? Stop it. I won't hurt you."

"What the hell are you doing here!?" Lex screamed, freaking out for real now—because as interesting and amusing the idea of alien heat was, it wasn't quite so amusing now said alien was all over him, rendering him totally helpless—but Clark captured his mouth again, and with every swirl of his tongue Lex felt himself growing harder, until it was not alarm but relief that made him gasp, and not the need to escape but the need to be touched that made him buck up when Clark's fingers trailed over his crotch.

Luthors, however, did not loose their head, not even in the middle of debilitating if non-consented to pleasure.

"Clark," he panted, concentrating on the pain of steel fingers around his wrist bones, "Clark, whatever you're doing, you've got to stop. You can't—where the hell are my pants?"

Luthors _did_ loose their head when they suddenly, between one blink of the eye and the next, found themselves completely naked without being aware they had undressed. He squeaked and started to fight to get out of Clark's grasp again.

"Just shut up, Lex,' Clark breathed, holding him easily. "And stop struggling. You'll only hurt yourself. Of course, you'll heal…" If his hands were warm his tongue was downright burning. He licked a fiery wet trail from one nipple to the other and then down Lex's chest, somewhat clumsily but still skillfully enough to make Lex hope he wasn't about to fricking _lactate_. If his nipples would be able to climax and ejaculate, it'd be dripping down his sides by now.

_But…but…but…but!_ At the same time Clark's murmured comments about Lex healing if he hurt him were severely disturbing.

"Christ," Clark muttered. He had arrived at Lex's stomach, "you're even smoother than Lana. I never thought you'd…"

_Lana!_ "Uh yeah, I don't doubt it," Lex gritted out. "Talking about…hah…Lana…Remember her? Your beloved little girlfriend? Girl next door? YOUR girl next door? You've got a girlfriend and unless sh-she's…Christ, Clark, would you stop DOING that? You've got Lana, so…w-why aren't you doing this with her?"

As far as he knew Clark had never exhibited any sexual interest in him, or any other guy before. He'd have been an ungrateful son of a bitch, too, with all those wide-eyed gorgeous girls mooning over him. Lex would have loved to seduce Clark if he'd thought he had half the chance, if only to get closer to him, not so much physically (although that might have been pretty intense if the current situation was any indication to go by) as mentally.

He'd never thought he'd make a chance, and so he hadn't tried. Instead, he'd tried to be friends. And failed. Imagine the disaster if he had tried to seduce him and failed—it was one thing to have murderous _wives_, think about having a super-powerful male alien _ex_.

Besides, there was Lex's own preference for tea instead of tomato soup to be considered. And, last but not least, his last, immensely successful relationship with Chloe. This insane situation at least served to put HER out of his mind.

"I can't do it with her," Clark said, but Lex might be mistaken about the meaning of those words, because the next moment Clark had reached the lowest part of Lex's belly and swallowed his erection down in one smooth movement.

All. The. Way. Down.

Lex cried out, hips jerking up in reaction…yet Clark didn't choke. He had NO gag-reflex.

"Oh sweet Jesus, Mary, mother of God…" Lex whined, forgetting he really didn't want to do this. He desperately want to hold onto something, the sheets, the bed, Clark's head, but his wrists were still caught in Clark's left hand, now somewhere at shoulder-height. "Claaark…"

Clark swallowed. And then he sucked.

_Note to self, _Lex registered, while neuromuscular euphoria made him see stars against the backs of his eyelids, _aliens have amazing mouths…This is sooo good…I have to lock him up in my cellar…God, I can't deal with this, I can't do this, I can't…_

He gave another whimper when fingers pressed just behind his balls, then hesitatingly circled his anus. "Christ…Clark…if you're going to hold back now…you…you really…"

Shove. Plop.

"Hey!"

Now that was not very pleasurable. Clark had really big fingers, and he just kind of shoved one in, twisted it, pulled it out again and pressed in two. Very fast, as if he was aware some stretching was in order but he really had no idea how to handle that part.

Lex opened his eyes, not aware he'd closed them in the first place, to see Clark kind of…blur…and feel cool air swoosh over flesh that had previously been covered, and suddenly the fingers entering him were slick with something he desperately hoped wasn't shampoo or olive oil or something corny like that, and Clark was naked as well.

Holy cow. He had released Lex's wrist, and Lex protectively crossed his arms over his chest, pulled his legs close to his body as he caught sight of the side effects (or maybe not so side) of alien Heat.

The man was MASSIVE. How did he ever get that monster inside Lana's puny body?

He was also dripping ready, and that strange, non-human scent was even stronger now, making Lex's erection throb painfully against his stomach, but god the size of him! And his face was flushed and damp and pretty fucking doable—much more doable, actually, than little Violetta last night…but there was an uncertainty in his eyes that acutely reminded Lex of the facts that he hadn't had sex with a man for over nine years, that he wasn't really experienced in it at all (tea, tomato soup), and also of the fact that Clark probably had never had sex with a man at all. Jonathan Kent would never have allowed it.

_-Clark, Son, men don't have sex with other men. It's not proper. Only people like Lex Luthor do that. You're not like people like Lex. You stick to women, now, won't you, Clark._

_-Yes, Dad._

You'll heal…

_Yeah, but I'd rather not get hurt at all._

Clark must have seen him blanch, because he repeated, "I won't hurt you."

"Oh, you won't?" Lex asked, scuttling away a little—and the next moment he was lying flat on his back again, Clark's hands effortlessly pushing his shoulders down on the mattress.

"No." Clark was breathing a bit fast. His eyes had taken on a slight reddish gleam. "Look," he said, and he continued with that abrupt way of lubing up of his, casually stretching out Lex's legs as he tried to kick Clark off, "I've been thinking about this. It should work. Just let me. Please. I'll be as careful as possible but…I'm…really kind of desperate."

"You're desperate." _Oh yeah, I'm really looking forward to torn anal muscles._ He was getting a little desperate himself. Nothing he was doing had even the slightest effect; Clark simply restrained him by pinning him down with one finger on his breastbone.

"Yeah…kind of…Look, you like this, right? You're…you're ready, aren't you? And you've done this kind of thing before. This is how it's supposed to be done, right? This is…"

"Clark." Yes, he liked it, although he could do without the probing fingers. Yes, this was about how it should be done, and yes, he'd done it before. But… "No. I want you to stop. I want you to explain to—would you STOP that!? Why can't you do this with Lana? I mean, she's made for…" and then he moaned out a curse when one of those relentless fingers hit his prostate and made his cock jump in reaction. The traitorous organ was still standing up proud, salivating like an epicure facing a prime side of beef. Clark seemed to take this exclamation as a Go sign; he kneeled between Lex's legs, moved his grip to his thighs instead and just pushed and slid inside.

"No wait, wait, wait!" Lex howled, tearing blindly at Clark's hands, but Clark just gripped his waist and hoisted him up to get better access.

"Oh fuck…" he gasped, and

"Owww fuuuck!" Lex screamed. He furtively tried to make his body relax, but it fucking HURT. "Take it out!" Clark began to pull back, slowly, and that hurt even more. "No, don't! Don't move! Don't move, Clark, don't…move…"

Clark's chest rose and fell against the backs of his thighs as he panted; for the rest he remained completely still. Lex bit down hard enough to hear his molars creak. Tears of pain trickled down his temples; he opened his eyes wide when a warm, wet tongue licked them away. _Tears…spaghetti sauce…what's the difference? _

The difference was pain.

And consent.

His whole body was screaming with indignation, both at the unnatural penetration and at the raging arousal persisting through the agony of said penetration. Thankfully, nothing seemed to have torn or been damaged; he wasn't bleeding, or at least he did not think so. Neither was he in any way comfortable but as his body adjusted the pain lessened until it became at least bearable, leaving him feeling uncomfortably stuffed. Clark's total stillness made it easier to relax and that, as well, eased his fear.

He became aware of the fact that he was breathing so fast he was almost hyperventilating and regulated his breathing by imagining he was lying on a beach. The burning skin pressed against his thighs, so hot it was making him sweat, aided his imagination. White, sandy beach, glittering in the sunlight, the kind you found on uninhabited islands.

_With a bloody coconut up my ass._

Through this all, Clark kept absolutely still. Finally, when Lex chuckled faintly, he asked, "Are you ok?"

Lex snorted. "Apart from the fact that I've got your dick up my ass while I'd resolved quite a few years ago that my calling was not up that creek? And not to mention that you're freaking HUGE? And that this constitutes as first-degree rape, me saying 'no' several times? Why, I think I'm doing just fine, thanks for asking."

"I'm not hurting you?"

Sarcasm, it seemed, was wasted on Clark at the moment. What a pity, he was usually so susceptible. "Well, as a matter of fact…" _Dear Clark, did you ever try cramming a steel rod up your butt?_

"Lex," Clark breathed, "don't shit with me. Do I need to stay still or can I move?"

"What are you going to do when I say you need to stay still?"

"Hemorrhage," Clark said painfully.

Lex got the impression he wasn't joking. And maybe it was because he wasn't out of his mind with lust, but it occurred to him that while Clark was usually warm to the touch, this heat might not be healthy, and while he wasn't exactly in a position to worry about his old enemy, he looked up in Clark's reddish eyes with a touch of concern. Was the object of his obsession sick? Or just horny? Maybe the two were related. Could it be that sex was lethal business to Kryptonians?

"Are YOU alright?"

"I will be if I can move."

Lex breathed out through his nose. It was obvious Clark wasn't going to abandon his little project at this point. The best way, he reasoned, was to just go along with it and hope he wouldn't end up ripped to pieces. "Ok," he said. "Move. But slo—oooooowwww!" It was a good thing Clark had released his arms so he could bite down on the fleshy part of his thumb and so keep from scaring the neighbors with banshee-like hollering.

_Hello mister prostate! Let me introduce to you the crown of Clark Kent's cock. Nice to meet ya!_

"Lex?" Clark gasped.

"What?" he panted back.

"Good or hurts?"

"Good," Lex moaned, arching. "Ahh. Both. Don't stop."

"Thank god," Clark groaned. He gripped Lex's hips more tightly, taking his weight in a way that was so fascinating Lex was almost distracted. Clark was balancing him with his _little fingers_…Shortly after having been lifted like that, though, he found it wholly impossible to be distracted by anything less than a gun blowing his head off; Clark was not only capable of holding Lex more or less in the air with his pinkies but also of pistoning his hips with the same speed as a drill.

_Oh Jesus, _Lex thought, as both the sensation and the knowledge Clark could do such things rushed through him and made him rock hard again, _if he's gonna go on like that he's going to set my ass on fire…I don't think flesh is supposed to survive that kind of friction…Good God how does he do this with Lana?_

He didn't, Lex surmised. He couldn't possibly without giving himself away. _Hey Lana, guess what, I'm actually and alien dildo! _He gasped with pain as Clark's fingertips squeezed into his back and sides, then whimpered with pleasure and geeky knowledge-satisfaction as he was shifted to a one-handed hold—one hand! Clark could keep him suspended in the air with one hand!—and three quivering fingers very gently, very tentatively closed around his erection.

"H-hurts?" Clark asked.

"No. Tighter."

"I might squeeze it off." His fist closed and Lex had a VERY unpleasant flash of trying to heal a crushed penis.

Right. "I'll do it myself," he said with a breathless chuckle.

"Huh," Clark grunted, dropped him back on the mattress and started to pound away again. Lex chewed on the ball of his hand, using the other to jerk off. Every other thrust or so Clark hit his prostate, and while that speed was now seriously beginning to burn, all he could do was let himself be handled like a doll and try not to scream too loudly.

Another reason why he'd decided the gay scene wasn't his cup of tomato soup; he always lost his self-control—well, the three times he'd experienced it. Especially this way, spread open to heaven with every inch of his hairless body exposed. Maybe it was that very lack of control that made him lose his inhibitions. If so, he might as well leave his thumb alone and start howling again; he did not think he had ever been more vulnerable in his life.

But even in vulnerability there was power. With every whimper of pleasure he made (or pain, let's not forget pain. He hated pain, he absolutely detested it. But combined with pleasure it rendered him, Mr. Control, as voluble as a little girl in a toy store), Clark's fingers tightened, and with every gasp his rhythm stuttered. He answered every moan he wrung out of Lex's throat with one of his own and that, Lex thought through the last dredges of panic at being helpless and the pre-orgasmic tightening of his muscles, was pretty satisfactory.

When he climaxed, it was as violent as the nature of this whole encounter; one thrust, one flick of his hand and suddenly he was coming so hard he wrenched his back trying to ride out the spasm.

"Oh god," Clark sobbed, curling around him and shoving through the contractions, "oh god I can feel this, I can _feel_ this…"

Lex could feel him, too, the moment he knew which way was up and which was down again: a flood of warmth low in his belly, spreading out as Clark rocked back and forth, milking himself dry on Lex's body. No condom. Oookay, that was…interesting. Neither was the force of his ejaculation strong enough to shoot his sperm through the walls of Lex's bowels, although it was hard enough he could feel it hit his guts. Clark was shaking, and in an upwelling of entirely misplaced tenderness Lex wrapped his arms around his shoulders and held him until the shaking stopped.

Clark raised his head from where it had lain on Lex's sticky chest—goddamn, but he'd managed to get semen up to his bloody CHIN—wiped his cheek and said, "Sorry. Are you alright?"

"Bit late," Lex said flippantly. "But it's ok." He pushed at Clark's shoulders. "You're crushing me. Could you…oowww…"

"I'm sorry!"

"GENTLY! Jesus Christ, Clark, I'm not a woman, you know!"

"I kind of noticed," Clark said. He pulled away from Lex's chest, gave him space to roll over.

Lex rolled, and his back gave a series of cracks and pops that made him groan. He studied his aching wrist. "I see," he said dryly, "why you can't do this with Lana." His arms were striped blue from elbow to wrist, with his own tooth marks like a shark's bite in the palm of his right hand. A quick examination of his body told him that his sides, his buttocks and his thighs were dotted with fingerprint-shaped bruises as well. "Desperate were you, huh?" He moved his head from side to side, and his neck cracked like a pistol shot.

Clark studied the bruises too, looking guilty but very much relieved. "Yeah…" He balled his hands to fists, propped them under his chin. "But I didn't break anything, did I?" His eyes made a quick inventory of Lex's body. "No. You'll _heal_. Lana…I'd snap her in two!"

_Yes, _Lex mused, hissing as he tried to sit up. Uh, no. That was not a good idea right now. _ He would. _Poor Clark. That must suck. Poor Lex, too. It still took time to heal.

Clark reached out a hand, and Lex pulled away. "Don't touch me. Just _don't_ touch me right now."

"I just want to…"

"Don't. Touch. Me."

Something like hurt flashed over Clark's face, then softened into sadness. "I'm sorry."

"I don't want you to be sorry, I want you to give me a moment to assess the situation." He sincerely hoped the situation didn't include a dislocated hip. "How do you do this…usually?"

Clark colored. "I…I just…it's embarrassing."

"Clark, jumping people and shoving your dick up their ass is embarrassing. Talking about why you do such things is pretty normal. I could do with an explanation."

"You're not mad at me?"

"I may be a bit miffed," Lex said evenly, repressing the peals of laughter that suddenly threatened to escape him. He could just see Jonathan Kent, bless his soul, waving his finger at his wayward son:

-_Damn it, Clark, didn't I tell you to ASK people for permission before you rape them!_

_-Yes Dad. Sorry Dad._

He chuckled. "No, I'm not mad at you. But I will be if you don't explain yourself. You don't have sex with Lana? Or…?"

"I do. I mean, we're good. Lana and I. We…um. Most of the time, it's ok. I just hold back."

"You hold back." That was a novel idea. Holding back. Could one keep back during sex? Lex knew all about delaying orgasms but actually keeping back…He'd always given everything he had and then some. Hmmm.

"Yes. Or I don't…come. I'm always afraid I'll hurt her. I did, once. Hurt her. She said she, she liked it." He looked away, cheeks reddening. Lex smirked. "But I was so scared I might hurt her again, that I'd break something. So I try not to…lose it," Clark continued. "And it's fine, most of the time. But sometimes I just…"

"Need to come your brains out," Lex said, taking a vicious pleasure in the burning embarrassment Clark was radiating. "Have you ever tried masturbation? It's an interesting concept…"

"Of course I have!" Clark snapped. "I've tried pretty much anything…"

"Cows?"

"Jesus Christ, Lex!"

"Well, you did live on a farm…"

"NO! I never fucked any cows!"

"Don't bite my head off. It's just that cows are a lot more durable than five foot three girls. And you did say you tried everything out…"

"I don't have sex with animals."

"Instead, you go into people's houses and perform some kind of alien sex-whammy on them."

Clark groaned. "Only on you," he protested.

Lex snorted. "I feel so privileged."

"Well you're the only one I know must have some experience with this…and…" he laughed a little, self-mocking and wry, "You're the only one I trust, who knows what I am. Apart from Chloe and my mom. And those two are not exactly…"

"Accessible, yes, I understand," Lex said. He regarded Clark with new interest, touched despite himself. _Oh Clark, I am so honored you trusted me enough to use me as your sex toy!_ But he was honored, in a strange, undoubtedly unhealthy way. And he was more than happy to be trusted enough to find out more about Clark's unique body. "So you decided that, because of my rebellious youth, I must have fucked men and women alike and would therefore be a good substitute to get your rocks off."

"Well, yeah."

"Did it ever occur to you to ask whether I'd ever actually _done_ the deed?"

Clark's eyes opened wide. "Y-you haven't? Are you telling me you've never…?"

Lex tried to stretch a kink out of his back. "Relax. I did." A series of soft crunches made him groan again as his vertebrae popped back into place. "Hated it. You just reminded me why; it bloody hurts. It's ok; I think I like the reversal of guilty feelings and, like you said, I'll heal. But I still don't get it. I mean, I understand you don't want to hurt Lana. But if you just make sure you keep your hands away from her while you make love to her, or if you let her blow you…Oh for fuck's sake, stop blushing! How can you possibly be more embarrassed by discussing sexual practices than by assaulting me?"

Clark shook his crimson head. "It's not…" He sighed, swallowed something. "I'm not always afraid I'll hurt her. But sometimes I get so…I get really hot inside. If that happens, everything becomes…Agh, I don't know how to describe it. I can't control myself, not enough."

"What triggers it, do you think?" Lex asked, busily filing every scrap of information away in his head. "The sun? Your powers are connected to the sun, aren't they? Don't look so surprised, I have eyes in my head. Or is it something periodical? Like being in heat?"

"Leeex!" Clark whined. "What am I, a dog? No," he added, "it isn't periodical. Maybe it's the sun, I don't know. I think it happens if I have to hold back for too long. But when that happens, and I have…and Lana and I…"

"Are getting it on," Lex supplied, earning a frown.

"Yeah, right, when we are 'getting it on', something about me kind of changes, I think. And she reacts to that. It makes her really…" He hesitated, and Lex rolled his eyes.

"Loud? Tall? Wet? Fat? Could you please finish your sentences once in a while?"

"Slick," Clark managed. "She becomes so slick I can't get any friction out of it. And then I just…don't feel it. It's better for her if I am that way, but for me… It's too soft, too smooth. I don't feel it. I can't get off. But until I do, I keep arousing her like that. And yes, I know, I can do it myself, but it isn't the same, and it isn't _enough_. And then I remembered that conversation we had, at the hospital, and…"

"This is payback?" Lex asked, perplexed. "For that time when I teased you about shooting your semen through her head?"

"Oh, you were teasing?" Clark said sarcastically—his sarcasm was reinstated, it seemed, now he had gotten what he came for. "No," he continued, "this isn't payback. It wasn't supposed to hurt you—you felt it too, didn't you, that _need_, just like Lana. I kind of think other people pick up on it too."

"It's a scent," Lex said, nodding. Oh yeah, he had felt 'it', too. He was already wondering if he could bottle it. "And a taste. You taste and smell different—different than ordinary people. You probably secrete some kind of pheromones," he smirked, "just like Desiree, only a little bit different."

"Oh, great!" Clark moaned. "I showered this morning."

"You'd better shower again," Lex said. He pushed himself up, and this time his back allowed movement. "Although I think you've stopped producing the stuff. It wasn't purely a smell, though. It's probably in your saliva, too. Why else would you kiss me, anyway?"

"I kissed you?" Clark asked, aghast.

"French," Lex informed him, with a certain relish. His mind was humming. If Clark couldn't even remembered he'd put his tongue into Lex's mouth, it was probably a natural impulse. A bit like a ferret biting a mouse, paralyzing it with the venom in its saliva. How…very interesting. He winced as he sat up on his knees. "So if this wasn't vengeance…"

"You gave me an idea," Clark said. "And since you know what I am already, and because you heal really fast…Well, I thought you wouldn't mind."

He sounded, Lex thought, as if he was planning to make this a habit. The thought of going through this again alone was enough to make him cringe. "Think again, Clark, old pal."

Clark's face fell. "But…you said you weren't mad—are you mad at me?"

"No, I'm not mad. But I can't say I'm thrilled either." He snorted out a laugh. "It really, fucking hurts, you know."

"But you came, didn't you? I mean you…"

"Shot my brains up to the ceiling, yes, I know." He held up his discolored arms. "Orgasm's over. Bruises stay. Of course, you did present me with a lovely gift of your DNA…"

He just had time to see Clark's eyes widen in fear, then he was whisked away so fast he swore he could hear the wind howl in his ears; then he was sitting in his bath with both taps wide open. Unfortunately the water didn't run half as fast as Clark; it was freezing cold. He uttered a breathless cry of shock and struggled to his knees. Clark pushed him back.

"Let me out! I was joking!"

"Even so, I think it's a good idea to wash you off. I'm sorry, I didn't think about protection—like I said, I was kind of desperate."

"It's cold!"

Clark gazed at the water. The water grew nice and warm. Lex grew nice and hard again. He really couldn't help it, but everything the blasted man did, every secret he showed Lex desperately turned him on. Or maybe that was the remnants of Clark's alien sex-whammy. Well, he could blame the whammy for now.

Clark sighed. "You really are a junkie, aren't you?" he asked.

"Don't blame me," Lex retorted. He began to scrub the stickiness from his chest. "You're the one who keeps supplying my stuff." When he looked up again, Clark was wearing jeans. For some reason this chagrined him to no end. "So," he said, gingerly sitting back in the bath—he might as well enjoy it now he was in it, and the warm water did soothe his abused muscles. "How do you usually deal with this problem of yours? Before you decided I was the solution—I do take it you are feeling better now?"

"Mm," Clark said.

"Mm yes or Mm no?"

"Mm yes."

"Well, that is a comfort at least. How do you usually deal with this heat of yours?"

"I really wish you wouldn't call it heat."

"Deal with it. Tell me."

Clark sat down on the edge of the bath. "It isn't all that usual. This…whatever it is, it only started happening a couple of months ago, when Lana and I got back together again. and started to…a closer relationship. Like she wanted." He bit his lip.

Lex repressed a smile. So the little ice princess was tired of a sexless life with her gorgeous boyfriend. Jason could have told her how frustrating that was. Little did she know that her boyfriend could literally set her on fire, if he only fucked her fast enough. And that was probably the source of Clark's problem, too. "So she wants sex and you spastically try not to screw her through the bed, the floor, and everything below that," Lex summarized. "Didn't the thought enter your mind that you're storing all that pent-up energy somewhere inside your body, and that it needs to come out?"

"I'm not an idiot," Clark snapped. "I'm well aware of that. Most of the time it bleeds off if I don't see her for a couple of days, or if I have to do something incredibly strenuous, like catching a…" he trailed off, regarding Lex with deep suspicion.

Lex avoided looking at him and rubbed his wrists, absently marveling at the stunning blue, black and red stripes pressed into his skin. He reached behind his back and turned off the taps. "If it fades away over time, why did you come here, to me?" he asked, truly curious. "You never gave me the impression you were even remotely interested in me. This way. Not even when we were friends."

"I wasn't," Clark said softly. "I still am not."

"Thank you very much," Lex drawled. Not only had he just been used, he had been used and Clark hadn't even felt like it. "This must all be a dream, including the weird feeling I have, as if I've just tried to give birth through my ass. Please, god, let me wake from this nightmare."

"No, it's not like that!" Clark rushed to explain. "It's…It's…Damn it, it's so difficult to explain! I wouldn't normally do this, you know. I wouldn't…Not with…I'm not…"

"Clark, have you ever considered seeing a logopaedist? That stutter of yours must really be an impediment in your current profession."

"Oh, shut up. Look," he said, "I love Lana. I really, really do, but I can't love her the way she wants me to, because I'll end up hurting her physically, and I can't tell her that I can't love her the way she wants me to because of what I am, because it's far too late to be honest with her now. She'd never forgive me for lying to her for so long. So I have to keep this quiet, but I can't. You, however, want me. I know you do. Maybe not physically, but you want to know everything about me, about what I am, about what I can do. Well, this is what I do. I need to get off once in a while. I need _contact_. I don't know why, but it's no good if I do it myself. You can help me. I trust you, although god knows I should know better, and you're the only person who is strong enough, both physically and mentally, to deal with…with what I am. Why are you laughing?"

Because Lex had started to chuckle. "Oh, nothing," he said, waving a hand and sending drops of water all around. "Just this incredibly charming love triangle—quatrangle?—you've created." He laughed aloud.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, think about it. Chloe had feelings for you, and now she's…she's with me." No reason to tell him if he didn't know yet. "You love Lana, and you're living with her now. And now you've cheated on her to have sex with me because she can't satisfy you." He guffawed. "I'm sorry, but I find that absolutely hiliarious."

"I didn't cheat on Lana!" Clark cried out.

Lex just grinned. _Uhuh. We're strictly platonic, Clark, you and me._

"Oh fuck," Clark groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Found a glitch in your train of reasoning? You really must have been hard-up…"

"Don't be so fucking smug about this!" Clark snarled. He got up, towering over Lex in his bath like an ancient oak. "You can't tell her! You can never tell her!"

"Why would I have any desire to tell Lana about our little tête-à-tête?" Lex asked calmly. It wasn't as if he'd ever want Chloe to find out either, on top of everything else. "My lips are sealed if yours are." He slowly, painfully climbed to his feet and plucked a towel from a holder. Clark looked away from him, as if Lex's nudity made him feel self-conscious, or maybe to give him some semblance of privacy. Lex smirked. "In exchange," he said slowly, after a quick rub-off that left the towel wrapped more or less around his waist—undoubtedly Mercury-like, but that could not be helped, "I want to ask you a favor as well."

"What?" Clark asked nervously.

"Don't give up on me again."

"Excuse me? I thought you said you never wanted…"

Lex put a hand on Clark's bare chest. It was warm, but hardly warmer than his own water-heated flesh. "I don't. But I'll let you, if you get desperate. You're right, I am the only one who can deal with that kind of thing. And I won't tell anyone. Ever. Your secret is safe with me, I swear it on my mother's grave. But in return, I want you to stick up for me, when—if—that time should come. I want you to defend me, and not turn your back on me and walk away."

"Lex, what are you talking about?" Clark's eyebrows dipped in alarm. "What have you done this time? Are you in trouble or something?"

"No." The lie was hard to voice even for a pathological liar like him. "I hope not," he amended. "But if push comes to shove…You just told me you trusted me. I lost that trust four years ago; now you say you've regained it. I'd like to think I've earned that." _Bought it back with my body, actually. _That realization was not as funny as it should be, and he talked over it. "So give me something in return. Don't let me down again, will you?" He hadn't meant to say those last two words aloud, and most certainly not in that pleading a way. _There goes my proud independence,_ he thought wryly. _Apparently I'm destined to be totally reliant on one of the Smallville club at all times._

But maybe he could use Clark as a conduit to influence Chloe, to stop her from publishing those things. Clark was easy to manipulate, he liked to believe in the good in people, and he, in turn, was an important influence in Chloe's life…_God, that's pathetic. I shouldn't need Clark to stop Chloe._

"Is that what you want?" Clark asked, voice soft. "Our friendship back?"

"I think that might be a bit too ambitious," Lex said, only partly flippant. He swiped the towel at his shin. "After all, you just raped me, and you're not even gay. Neither am I, come to think of it."

"I didn't rape you!" Lex raised an eyebrow. "I didn't…I never meant…Arrgh!" he flung out his arms, gave a yank at his own hair and heaved a defeated sigh. "I did, didn't I?"

"Pretty much."

"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I never meant to."

"I know you didn't." Of that Lex was, indeed, certain. Clark Kent would never, ever, not even high on red K, force himself upon anyone. Toss them around, insult them and maybe even kill them, yes. Sexual assault, no. The fact that he just had was only the exception to the rule. "You could just have asked?" he suggested. "It might have helped?"

"I wanted to ask," Clark said. "Yesterday. I looked all over for you yesterday evening. I thought you were in Manhattan. And when I found you…"

"What do you mean, when you found me?" Either he'd been even more drunk than he'd thought he was, or…

"When I found you, you just came home," Clark said. He crossed his arms over his chest. "This morning. You almost ran me over AGAIN."

"Well, I…"

"Was sloshed out of your mind."

"…had been out," Lex amended.

"You almost parked your Ferrari on top of me."

"I might have been a touch intoxicated…"

"Like an ape, Lex. You couldn't even walk straight."

Lex shrugged. "So why not take advantage of me then? I probably wouldn't even have felt it."

Clark looked so scandalized it was funny. "I'd never do that! You were practically senseless! I'd never force…" He stopped as Lex held up his blackened wrists. "I did."

Lex smiled. "Yes. You did."

"I am so sorry."

"Good. Next time, ask."

"I wanted to. Trust me, Lex, I was going to ask. I wasn't even going to…to…But when I was waiting and you opened the door and I thought I was going to just _burst_, it…"

"That's enough guilt, thank you." Much more and he would make Lex feel guilty, too. And he already had more than enough guilt on his plate. As he finished drying off, the almost-forgotten anxiety came creeping back, adding yet another discomfort to the list so drastically expanded this morning. "Where are my clothes?" Clark should know, he was the one who took them off.

Whoosh. "Here," said Clark, and handed him an armful of natural fabric. Lex shot into it almost as fast as his rapist friend.

"What time is it?"

"Um…almost nine."

Lex looked up from his buttons. "Almost NINE??"

"Well, eight forty-eight."

"God damn it!" He ran to the bedroom to search for his shoes. Clark trailed after him.

"What? What is it?"

Lex sat down on the bed and hastily stood up again, wincing. Why did he sit down anyway? Loafers made sitting down redundant. "Because I have a bloody meeting in ten minutes, that's why. A kind of important meeting." He glowered at Clark's guilty face, knotting his tie with unconscious practice. "A meeting I really can't afford to be late for."

"You can still make it," Clark said.

"No, Clark, I can't. It isn't at the main building, it's in the South-Met Jetty Area. Even without traffic it would at least take me half an hour to get there, and there's…"

"I can take you."

Lex stilled. "You. Can take me."

Clark met his eyes steadily. "Yes. I can take you. It's my fault you're late in the first place, so…I can take you."

_If this is the price to get another fix…_Lex thought, trying to convince himself that he was being sardonic, _bring it on. Feed me._ "I thought you were only stronger than normal people," he said slowly.

Clark was having none of it. "Stop fishing," he said. "Do you want me to run you over there or don't you?"

"Can you make it within ten minutes?"

"I got you from the forest to the hospital within five, and that was only because I had to stop speeding a few blocks away to avoid suspicion. Yes, Lex, I can. As you very well know."

Lex smiled. It wasn't a smirk, or a leer, or a grin, it was an irrepressible smile of pure pleasure. "I'd love you to take me," he said, and he really had to practice this kind of smile in front of the mirror, because if it always had the same result as it had on Clark, by the look on his face, it should be able to get him out of a heck of a lot of hairy situations.

"Do you know where it is?"

"I think I do," said Clark.

"Ok."

"Right." He walked up to Lex

he felt hard hands grip his shoulders and thighs

the world melted down to colors and wind

and less than a minute later they were standing in the shadow of the main building. Clark put him down and steadied him as Lex reeled and almost fell face-first into the wall.

"Whoo!"

"It's easier on people when they're unconscious," Clark said apologetically. "I still need to work on the comforts of traveling with passengers."

"I'm willing to volunteer for practice," Lex said dreamily. He really wasn't looking forward to sitting through a three hour meeting, but this, this was worth every second of future discomfort.

Clark snapped his fingers in front of Lex's face. "Come down, will you? Your business friends will think you're high. You have…three minutes, by the way. I'd better be off."

"Yes," Lex said, doing his damnedest to swallow the grin plastered all over his face. "Yes, you'd better." He put his hands in his pockets. "Hey, Clark," he called softly, when Clark turned around to disappear in a whirl of speed.

"Yeah?"

"Next time, read up on anal sex before carrying it out, will you?"

For the final time, Clark blushed a satisfying beet red. "Fuck you," he said, but he smiled. And then he was gone.

"Yeah, pretty much," Lex murmured.

His grin faltered. "Pretty much indeed."

And how do I stop her?

TBC


	29. Chapter 29 back to het!

Hello

Hello! Well, a whole chapter within one week. I'm proud of myself.

This one is all Chlex again, so no worry for those who were abhorred with the last chapter. Hmm…So far I've had 'interesting', shocked disgust and 'funny'. Lol! I did warn…Anyway, there's mention of what happened in the last chapter, but no slash.

This is a rather frustration of moping and a further exploration of the sweet and wonderful friendship between Lex and Clark (repetition: no slash). Still mostly Lex's POV, I'm afraid, but next chapter Chloe will take over again. Anyway, on with the rest of the storm…

Twenty-nine: In which everybody is unanimously unhappy

After his meeting with Shell Lex more or less tottered out of the building and into the company car he'd arranged to pick him up and have him transported to LuthorCorp Towers. He didn't know if it was because of the subject of pipe lines and oil jetties, which wasn't something he specialized in, or the remnants of the alien pheromones polluting his blood, or the back-lash of sexual release combined with both mental and physical trauma (He'd never been raped before. Most certainly not by a friend. Shot, yes. Kidnapped, yes. Tortured, yes. Betrayed, yes. He could deal with that easily—well, he dealt with it. Rape…rape was new, and he wasn't yet sure how well he was going to cope when it finally sunk in), or simple lack of sleep, but all he wanted to do was close his eyes and sleep for a day.

_Nonsense. _With Chloe gone, his father seemed to have taken up permanent residence in his head again. _You don't need sleep. You just need a couple of aspirins, a cup of coffee and a whole-wheat sandwich with tuna salad and lettuce. _

Lex chuckled faintly at himself. It was one thing to have his father discipline him about his personal failings, but imagining him lecturing about food was actually quite funny. Opening eyes he couldn't remember closing, he flipped open his cell and scanned the internet for the latest news. He didn't have to, because he knew that Mary, or any other assistant he had, or, probably the fastest of them all, his father, would inform him if there was anything in any newspaper that might possibly threaten either him or LuthorCorp. There was nothing. Instead of relieving it, the absence of incriminating articles increased his worry triple-fold.

Why hadn't Chloe published the Cradle Cancer story yet? Was she too upset? Was she ill? Or had she simply not have the time to finish tweaking it yet? Was this a good sign or an ominous one?

Lying in a half-sprawl in the backseat of the car, Lex rubbed his painful wrist with one hand while he fiddled with his cell phone in the other.

What tactics to use? He was a patient man, and waiting things out had yielded him victories that might easily have been total destructions…but waiting for the article that would warrant his execution was killing him. Waiting for Chloe to WRITE that article was killing him. If she wanted to bring him down, she should just do it and not leave him hanging like this. On the other hand, if he could still stop her, somehow...

Women were strange creatures. Was she torturing him or was she waiting for him to take the first step towards reconciliation? He remembered Paris, and that abhorrent hat, and almost called her...but then he remembered her standing in his office, screaming that she would bring him down, and he snapped his cell closed with an abrupt surge of anger.

No. He was done pleading with people to forgive him for things they had no right to demand his forgiveness for. If she hated him for doing things of which she didn't even know the details, without even giving him a chance to explain, there was no use humiliating himself and trying to explain. She wouldn't listen. People never listened. Not the people who mattered, anyway. Fine. If she had judged him guilty, so be it. Her loss. And if she thought she could take him on in court, well, he'd show her yet! He'd show her EXACTLY what he was capable of! If he had to, he'd have her declared insane. Madness ran in the family, right? If she was so convinced he was an utter bastard, he'd be one. He'd drag ma Sullivan out of her madhouse and plant her drooling form in front of a bought-off jury, and then Chloe'd find out exactly what happened if you first told Lex Luthor that you loved him and then stabbed him in the back.

In a fit of petulant rage he stuffed the phone down in the breast pocket of his shirt, beneath his coat—and had to dig it up less than a minute later as it announced the receipt of a text message.

_Hartlow_, the display told him, and he opened the message with an irritated huff.

_Lex you missd out girl soooo talnted! Was good 2 c you again. Rep soon? John_.

Lex hated people who did not take the time to spell out words in their text messages. John and his rutting filled him with loathing—and a deep, smoldering suspicion. Rep soon? What on earth for? Why was John so determined to suddenly tighten the old bonds? It wasn't as if they'd ever been close beyond the endless nights of clubbing, smoking and shooting up, alcohol-distilling attempts and picking up of women.

"Who hired you anyway," he muttered to himself. "And why?" Surely there were more promising lawyers to be found than John 'Does it have a hole?' Hartlow.

Then he sighed; of course John Hartlow wasn't connected to Edge. He was just a stupid fuck with a glib tongue and slick manners. There was no reason he'd want to bring LuthorCorp down; he'd just secured a position with said firm! And the reason he wanted to hang out with Lex was probably still the same as it had been all those years ago: Lex could significantly broaden his prospects of scoring pussy. The very reason why Lex resolved to quickly sever their beautiful rekindled friendship: he didn't mind to be used as some kind of key to places other people couldn't go to, but he did object to being exploited. John appreciated Lex's intelligence and sharp, cutting wit, but women would always come first. Lex hated being second, even when it concerned people he really couldn't stand. When it came to ruthless exploitation, John Hartlow was even worse than Lex himself, but guilty of treason…nah. He wasn't smart enough.

That was the worst about situations like these: he immediately suspected everybody of conspiring against him. Paranoia was exhausting. He already was so damn tired. He almost wished Chloe would just go ahead with it and excrete all that Luthor filth onto the eager masses.

Disregarding the scathing voice in his head proclaiming him a worthless weakling, he closed his eyes. Twenty more minutes to his office. Maybe, if he tried very hard, he could convince his body that it was twenty hours, so it would heal and invigorate itself.

Chloe sat on her bed, curled up around her pillow, her badgered laptop in front of her humming complainingly about the fact that the covers made it impossible to ventilate properly. She had started typing her big article and what she had typed so far was good, probably the best she had ever written. There was a furious quality to her writing, a

palpable indignation, well founded and with the sheen of righteous tears. Anger and horror dripped from her sentences, never diminishing the impact the story made. It was a masterpiece of journalism.

Reading it filled her with a sickening mixture of professional pride and personal misery.

What she really wanted to do, what she should be able to and NEEDED to do was call Lois and cry out on her suffragette shoulder. She wanted to howl to Lois what a lying, cruel bastard Lex was, how he had shaken her trust by flat-out lying to her about his disgusting little projects, how he had made her doubt her self-worth and dented her faith in herself. And no doubt Lois would agree totally, support her and subtly say that she had known that all along—for Lois could be subtle if she wanted to, and if the situation warranted such. She would urge Chloe to spit her thug over this here beat and cheer for every negative image of Lex that left her mouth; then offer to bash his brains in and

piss on his bleeding body.

It would make her feel a lot better.

For a while.

Knowing that it would make her feel better, if only for one evening, made it all the harder not to grab her phone and wail 'He HURT meeeeee!' into Lois' ear.

Still, she refrained from doing so. On the contrary, she had gently held off Lois' offers of coming round and comfort her in her hour of flu and misery, claiming she was feeling too sick for chickflick marathons. Of course she was feeling quite ill, but only part of it had to do with her cold. While it had taken her out for the count the entire Thursday and she had told herself that it was so bad it would keep her from reading Edge's files today, the cold itself was actually well on its way to certain demise.

Lying to Lois had made her feel guilty, but the guilt wasn't enough to call her and ask her to come over. Her phone was lying silent and blinking on her night stand—the blink was from a missed call that hadn't been Lex. Lex was as silent as her phone.

Another option would be to call Clark and weep against his manly chest of steel. He would be understanding too—if, of course, he'd care to listen to what she had to say and didn't interrupt her every other word—since he'd been through the same stage as she was going through now. Having her blubbering in the protective circle of his arms would, of course, destroy any newly-built trust between him and Lex, and destroying the last chance of a friendship, or at least some sort of non-hostile relationship between the two of them would be a very satisfying way to take revenge on Lex.

It was also something she truly did not want to do. Why? she wouldn't know. The bastard didn't deserve any trust.

The problem was, she thought wryly, that all her friends already thought Lex was shit, and while that made her sure of their sympathy, it wouldn't really help her to figure out what to do. Even while she wanted to be comforted by a pair of strong, either male or female arms, going to her closest friends would be so hypocritical as to be embarrassing. While her feelings of betrayal and anger were very real and legitimate, the whole situation made her feel like a duplicitous bitch.

Lex had lied to her, and that hurt the most—but she'd known he was lying. Ok, she had thought he wasn't lying to her but she really should have known better. These were not the kind of secrets you told, not if they were this horrible.

And she had kept Edge's letter from him. What was more, she'd kept it from the police as well, and she was no longer entirely sure that had been to protect Lex. The article she had just written had broken her heart—but it was a damned good news item. And that painted a picture of herself that was not favorable at all.

Her anger towards Lex was a confused jumble of emotions, aimed mostly towards him but some to herself and to others: anger at him that he had fooled her into believing he was innocent.

Anger at herself for being so upset about it. Horror at what she had read in Edge's files and an inability to connect it to the Lex she knew. Amazement and hurt that he had somehow managed to be so different behind his mask that she didn't recognize him—and doubt, too, because she KNEW what he was like, didn't she? Anger at Edge for making her feel this way. Guilt for following Edge's lead, and satisfaction about finally finding this out—again combined with pain and anger and more guilt for feeling this way.

Before, she had been enraged by what she had perceived as Lex threatening her—"My father will kill you." By now she had realized that he hadn't been threatening her, but was seriously afraid Lionel would kill her. After all, Lionel had tried that before and Lex had

protected her from him, and she had still almost been blown to pieces. That honor-bound obligation to keep her safe, that was so very Lex it made her feel like crying, because it was those chevalier actions that had always struck her as so very charming, and losing that…She blew her nose, tossed the used Kleenex onto the pile in her overflowing bin.

Lex still wanted to protect her, obviously, but since she was the one trying to bring him down she could imagine it was difficult.

And she was afraid. Lionel scared her in a way Lex never would. Lex loved her—or had loved her, anyway; but Lionel would just as well gut her and use her blood for fertilizer. Lex was right, she now understood. If she published this masterpiece of journalist art, she

was going to open a can of whoopass as of yet without bounds. Was that worth it?

As a reporter, she'd answer that question with a ringing 'Yes!'

As a person who knew what it was to be locked away in a safe house...

As a person who was going to betray one of her best friends...

As a woman who was going to socially butcher the man she loved...or thought she loved...

She hugged her pillow tighter to her chest. Bringing this out was the Right Thing To Do. People had died, laws had been broken. _Trust had been broken. Hearts had been broken. _The guilty party should be punished. The fact that it was Lex shouldn't make a difference—but of course, it did. It did now. In fact it mattered more than anything else in this whole damned mess. She was dying to see him in court, have him pay for that dreadful .wav file and all those other things he'd lied about—none of it as convincing as that horrible scream voiced by the man called 'Jack', and for covering up the Cradle Cancer case. At the same time she couldn't stand thinking she might put him there. Even imagining Lex in court made her feel sick, although he was probably used to it.

A violent wave of hatred towards the two men who made her feel this way made her stomach clench: Towards Edge for using her to uncover his filthy truth, and towards Lex for making her love him and having this kind of skeletons in his closet.

_I hate you for not being able to let me keep my blissful ignorance._

There. It was out, if only in her head. The first entirely truthful thing she had thought all evening. It was a thought so petty and self-centered she would have laughed at anyone else voicing it, and she did sneer at herself, but the epiphany did not make her feel any better. Nor did it answer the question _What am I going to do now_?

"Send it or destroy it?" Her fingers hovered over her keyboard. She typed another three, four condemning sentences, saved her file. Then she blew her nose, stared at the text, and sighed. _Lex. Why don't you call me and stop me?_

If reality had mirrored Lex's state of mind, there would be torrential rains, flashes of lightning and growls of thunder, and the occasional swell of musical despair produced by an orchestra of corpses playing Mahler's sixth symphony. Instead, the sky was blue, the sun was shining, and a misguided brass band around the corner was playing 'Happy Days Are Here Again'.

Lex sat staring at a printed spreadsheet, supporting his head in his hand, and wondered if he could have another shot of espresso without getting a caffeine overdose. Already his heart was beating twice as fast as it usually did (he could feel it thudding rapidly in his chest) and faint tremors kept starting up in the pit of his stomach and then radiating outward, ending at the tips of his fingers. His entire body was thrumming with nervous, caffeine-induced energy. Unfortunately that energy did nothing to improve his concentration, nor did it drown the lethargy dragging his eyelids down. His mind couldn't decide what to stress about: Chloe's betrayal, Lex's anger at that betrayal or Lex's hurt feelings at being so brutally dumped, Clark's unexpected, alien problem, the way he'd solved it, his manner of reasoning, and the after-effects of the problem's solution. To his chagrin, Lex also realized that he badly missed someone to talk to—someone he trusted, liked and who wasn't afraid to joke with him or tell him to go to hell.

His poor subconscious didn't stand a chance figuring out how he felt about Chloe or Clark if his conscious ego couldn't work it out. As a result, any and all of the thoughts above kept intruding at the most inappropriate of times— while he had lunch and drank way too much coffee; during telephone conversations; while he was writing a summary of this morning's meeting for his Asia department; in the middle of an unpleasant but very necessary and calculated loss of temper with one of his directors who'd screwed up in France; and now, again, while he was trying very hard not to fall asleep over the spreadsheet.

"Sir?"

He didn't even open his eyes. "What?"

"Go home."

"I'm not done yet."

"It's five." Mary's voice came from a very short distance, and he slowly tilted his head on his hand until he could see her face. "It's Friday, and I'd like to go home. However, a good P.A. never leaves before her boss does. You're putting me in a dreadful situation. Especially," she smiled a little, "since I don't think you have moved a muscle in the last forty minutes and have been sitting with your eyes closed for at least ten. Are you alright? I know you don't appreciate me prying into your private life, but you seem somewhat off-kilter these last few days."

"Busy week," Lex said noncommittally. Mary arched an eyebrow, and he sighed, tired of keeping up appearances. What good would it do to remain here and thereby force Mary to stay as well if he wasn't going to do anything productive anyway? He put down his pen, shut down his computer and carefully got up from his chair. Mary was right, he hadn't moved a muscle in quite a long time, and with good reason: they all hurt. Maybe he could call a masseuse over and have her knead the kinks out of him…No, bad idea. Not with all those bruises. Massaging them would increase the blood flow and make them heal faster, but he really didn't want to expose his tenderized flesh to curious eyes.

"Here you go," Mary said, and helped him into his jacket. As he stretched out his arm the cuff of his shirt rode up, showing a beautiful sunset of color on his wrist. Mary noticed it, and he saw her eyes widen, but she said nothing although her lips thinned and worry darkened her eyes. He grunted an expression of thanks, both for the help and her silence, put on his coat as well and followed her down to the reception hall where he ordered a car to take him home. He managed to stay awake until he was dropped off at his penthouse, rode up the elevator in a half-doze, opened the door and took off his shoes with his eyes closed and failed to get undressed further than his jacket before simply giving up and sinking down on the bed. His blindly seeking hand pulled one pillow down for his head and another to keep him from rolling over—his back didn't approve of that. _Maybe next time you can buy yourself a really tight inflatable doll and use her to get off instead of me, _he thought hazily. Before he was halfway finished tugging the duvet around him he'd already fallen asleep.

Chloe finished her article at nine. After editing it was eight pages long, had twenty-eight footnotes, listed three crimes with enough evidence to be punishable by law and four that had inadequate proof to be a serious threat to LuthorCorp but were still damnable enough to raise some serious hell and incite the Metropolis Chief Commissioners to write bible-thick stacks of search warrants.

She had sent it to her Daily Planet email address as a .doc file and printed it out on her semi-multifunctional; now she had it on her lap, together with the last carton of Ben&Jerry's Clark had brought her yesterday, and licked chocolate ice cream from her fingers to keep from making fingerprints on her baby. Oprah was on—no matter what time, Oprah was always on, on one channel or another—and today's issue was, very fitting, violent and destructive children.

She cast a look at her own newest creation, caressing it with her fingers and sneering down on it with a curled lip. Ten pages, including a title page and finishing blank page, and two blind cartons to keep it together. Her baby. It _felt_ like a baby for sure. She couldn't bear to let it out of her sight, her thoughts were constantly with it, and she had dedicated it all her energy. Now she didn't know what to do with it.

'_It doesn't matter what I do,'_ a young, stressed-out looking single mom sobbed on Oprah's ample chest. _'it's never enough! He just doesn't listen to me. I just want him to love him, he's my baby, and he's all that I have, but I just can't deal with him!'_

Oprah made shushing noises. The camera zoomed in on a four-year-old sitting in the chair next to his mother's, his small legs kicking, feet ten inch from the floor. He was regarding his mother with barely concealed disdain. The expression looked out of place and rather creepy on his young, freckled face.

"Yeah, it's a really good idea to admit that right in front of your son," Chloe scoffed, and plunged her spoon deep into the ice cream container. "He's really going to respect you after this revelation."

Her own baby, after its lengthy and painful deliverance, was quiet and unobtrusive—much like a new-born Mordred. Its mother could do two things: send it into the world and let it wreak righteous havoc on its father with the chance of ending up dead herself as a result, or kill it and spare herself and its father a ton of grief.

'_Don't you…discipline him?' _Oprah asked tentatively. _'I mean with time-outs, putting him in the corner?'_

'_I've tried…'_ the young mother sighed. _'But it affects me more than it does him! I have no authority over him whatsoever.'_

Could a mother kill her child? Chloe watched a home-shot video of the mother and her son that was almost as shocking as the .wav file on Edge's memory stick. If that boy had been her son she'd have flushed him down the toilet at the age of two. Yet her article, lying so sweet and heavy on her left knee…No, she couldn't give that up. She didn't want to. Lex deserved it. He'd had it coming a long time. Bastard.

He still hadn't called her. Apparently he didn't want to explain himself. He was probably sure he'd win any case she might bring to court. Chloe almost choked on a huge spoon of ice cream. "We'll see about that, Lex! We'll just see about that when I send this in, won't we? And God you'll be sorry for not trying to apologize to me!"

Oprah introduced a Super Nanny, a pleasantly portly woman with a friendly face and eyes like the Terminator. Chloe turned off the TV. She wanted to go to bed filled with cold rage and conviction…

…before she changed her mind yet again and started feeling alone and miserable.

Lex woke up at two o' clock at night in a tangled twist of blankets, trying to fend off alien rapists and a small blonde girl who was shouting descriptions of everything that was happening to him through a Dictaphone. His head felt as if it was going to split in two like an overripe water melon and all the bruises on his body were all singing a different song of protest.

"Fuck you," he gasped at the ceiling. "Make up your mind about which events you're using to create my nightmare." Combining every single traumatic event of the last...two days...really wasn't playing fair.

Since he felt sleeping was out of the question for the time being he got out of bed, desperately missing someone he could curl up against, got himself a drink and spent two hours zapping through one mind-bendingly horrible program after the other, until sheer depression made him turn off the TV and try to get some more sleep.

When he woke up again it was almost two in the afternoon. The headache was gone, his bruises had all faded to a greenish brown and yellow, but he was still feeling so low he almost turned over and went back to sleep again. Unfortunately Luthor pride insisted that wasting time like this was simply 'not done', so he got up, ordered something to eat and sat down (at least he could sit properly again, that was good thing) on his couch, waiting for the energy to take a shower. As he was sitting there, he turned on the news...nothing. He zapped through every channel that might possibly show any kind of news…nothing.

Then he plugged in his laptop, logged into every newspaper site he had a password for, and hacked into a few others besides...nothing.

She still hadn't published anything. What the hell was she doing? Why the HELL hadn't she published her great big disclosure all over the world?

"What are you waiting for!? What the FUCK are you waiting for, you bloody BITCH!?"

If only he hadn't loved her. If only she was someone else, anyone else, she'd have been properly persuaded by now that getting anywhere near a keyboard would result in fingerless hands. If she'd been anyone else he'd have been standing on her doorstep two evenings earlier and scared the hell out of her simply by telling her he would be most displeased if she made any of that crap public. He'd have her deported out of the fucking country, if she could just have been ANYONE else but Chloe bloody Sullivan.

"FUCK you!" he screamed in helpless fury, and threw the nearest object at hand against the wall. It turned out to be a pillow. It made a soft thump and fell serenely to the floor. "Fuck you," Lex muttered, and became even more angry when his eyes began to sting. He would NOT cry over yet another pathetic lost love affair. He was a Luthor, god damn it, and Luthors bounced right back. He'd bounce her right out of the earth's atmosphere!

Well, there was the energy he'd been waiting for, even if it didn't exactly improve his state of mind. Snatching up the ash tray from the destroyed club from his table, Lex got to his feet and hurled the it with all his might against a framed etch just above his television. Both the glass, the etch, and the ash tray exploded with a cathartic crash. He'd hoped the pieces might damage his TV as well, but no, the destruction was restricted to etch and ash tray.

Good enough. He'd broken something and that had been his intention. No use tearing down his entire house—he'd only have to have it refurnished and he really wasn't in the mood for working men. Casting one final, satisfied glance at the mess on the floor, he angrily stalked out of the room, towards his bathroom, taking a furious delight in slamming every door he walked into.

After showering and forcing himself to have a proper lunch Lex tried working for a while, but his mind refused to properly boot up; it was almost as if he were normal again.

Thankfully, there was Clark.

When Lex opened his front door to head out to LuthorCare and check up on his kids, something that didn't require his brains to actually function, Clark was standing right outside his door, leaning against the opposite wall of the hallway.

"Hey Lex," Clark said, reaching out one of those huge hands of his…and Lex freaked out so hard he had slammed the door into Clark's face and was back inside his own bedroom before he even knew he had turned tail and ran. Any conscious thought was drowned out by a boiling flood of adrenaline and one overpowering realization: NO. I WON'T LET HIM DO THAT AGAIN.

Clark called his name—too close, inside. _He'd stopped the freaking door!_

Lex pressed his back against the wall, eyes flicking frantically all over the room searching for a weapon, any weapon that might stop him…The ring, where had he put the ring? He had a gun hidden away in his desk in Smallville, but not here, and where had he left that fucking green K ring?

"Lex?" Clark asked. He must be standing right outside the door to Lex's bedroom. Lex's teeth began to chatter. "Lex? Are you ok? Can I…can I please come in?"

He clenched his jaws together and pushed harder against the wall. "No. Go away."

"Lex. Please. Let me in. Please. I won't hurt you. I swear I won't hurt you. I won't even get near you. Please let me in, I need to talk to you."

_He can walk through that door as if it's made of paper,_ Lex reasoned with the thing inside of him that was still fleeing. _He's asking if he can come in. He's in control. He says he won't hurt me. Christ, this is Clark bloody Kent we're talking about. He wouldn't hurt a fly._ He was still shaking so hard the change in his pockets was jingling.

"Lex?" Clark asked again. "Are you ok? I'm…God, I'm sorry. Please let me come in. Please let me apologize. Are you ok? I'm so sorry. I wasn't thinking. I won't hurt you, I swear I won't. It's over, I'm fine and I'm not going to hurt you, ok. So can I please come in and see if you're fine?"

Lex took a deep breath, rubbed an icy hand over his wet face. He barked out a laugh at himself: Lex Luthor, standing knee-deep in fear-sweat—but when his mouth closed his teeth began to rattle again and even his fists were quivering. Nevertheless he forced himself to nod. His mouth was too dry to speak.

Clark had been looking through the door, because the handle turned and he opened the door, wide as it could go, slipped in and placed himself against the wall, as far away from Lex as was possible while being in the same room. His face was a study of horrified guilt and that, that familiar expression on that innocent, familiar face, stopped the animal instinct in Lex's body trying to burrow into the wall._ Whenever you start to panic, _some childhood therapist droned in the back of his head, _imagine you're behind a bullet-proof glass wall. Nothing can touch you. It's like a movie. Breathe._ He breathed.

He was beginning to feel spectacularly stupid.

"I'm sorry," Clark said. "First and foremost, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry I hurt you, and I'm sorry I assumed you wouldn't mind. I'm sorry I was so selfish. I'm sorry I didn't…I didn't think about how this must have been to you. I thought…I honestly thought it wouldn't hurt you. I didn't think it…I never meant to damage you." He shook his head, his eyes never leaving Lex's face. Something like pain twisted his mouth. "I was so afraid of hurting Lana I never considered that even though you'd heal, it'd hurt you too, more, maybe. It simply didn't occur to me. All I thought about was that you'd be able to take it, and that you're the only one I trusted enough to turn to, and I'm…Lex, I'm so sorry. Please stop looking at me that way."

"S-sorry," Lex lisped. "Rabbit-reflex." The shivers began to ease up. He unclenched his cramped hands. Luthors did not behave like rabbits.

"I'll leave, if you want," Clark said. His voice caught, once. "I understand. I just wanted you to know that I'm sorry and that I never meant to hurt you." He studied Lex with a thoroughness that suggested X-ray and that, as well, helped Lex to repress the urge to run like hell. Which, after the easy way they parted just after Clark had raped the fucking daylights out of him, was a pretty weird response anyway.

_Stress. Must be stress. Being scared of Clark Kent…Ha! Laughable. He's the good guy, remember? He saves people. He doesn't rape them. So what if he can restrain me with one digit? I'm fine. I'll be fine. If he says he won't hurt me, he won't._

_But he did._

_And I don't think I'm doing quite so well._

"Do you want me to leave?"

He swallowed. "No."

"Are you alright?"

Lex laughed. "No. You scared the fuck out of me." He flung himself away from the wall, endeavoring casual elegance, and kind of crumpled on the bed. His fingers were still quivering. He frowned down on them, and they stopped. Lex kept looking down on his hands, telling himself that he wasn't afraid, and that not being able to pinpoint Clark's position every single second was not threatening at all. When nothing happened for more than a minute and even the last minor tremble had bled away, Lex looked up and smiled, happy to have his face obey him again.

"Well," he said dryly. "That was embarrassing."

"Lex…"

"I get it. You're sorry."

"Are you sick?"

"Sick? No. Why?"

"I mean, did…what I did to you, are you ok? My…my semen, I mean. It didn't hurt you?"

Ah. That. Lex smiled faintly. "No. At least, I don't think so. I've just been really tired. Especially yesterday, it's better now. But I thought that might have been a reaction to your pheromones. Could have been your sperm, I don't know. If so, it's mostly gone, now. There was no long-term damage—as you predicted."

Clark grimaced. "I'm sorry. What about…I checked for broken bones, yesterday. But when I woke up I remembered what I…how I held you down." He was blushing again. "Did I hurt you in any other way?"

"Why don't you check?" Lex asked, a touch cruelly.

"I can't. I can't really focus my x-ray like that. I can look through clothes and flesh and bones, but I can't really select which layer to remove." He took a step closer, then reigned himself in and remained where he was standing. "Please, Lex. I need to know. Did I hurt you in any way? Other than the…obvious." He looked away. "I know I should have known but I honestly didn't realize it would be so hard on you. I mean, there are lots of gay men, right, and they all have sex, and if it is so painful…But that's neither here nor there." He turned back to Lex. "Please show me."

"No," said Lex.

Clark's mouth opened, closed, then opened again. "Why not?"

"I'm not going to let you beat yourself up over something that has already happened and for which you've just apologized."

"That bad?" Clark said quietly.

Lex almost rolled his eyes. Trust Clark to read him wrong when he was being laconic. "It hurt. You got that." For some reason he was beginning to get a little angry. Clark once broke his arm when he was infected with some sort of paranoia substance, and he didn't apologize then, or only vaguely, claiming he hadn't been himself. Why bother now? "It's ok now."

"It can't be ok if seeing me makes you freak out like that," Clark said stubbornly. He sighed as Lex raised an eyebrow. "Fine. Don't show me. It's your good right."

"Damn right," Lex said. He slid off the bed. "Come on. Let's behave like civilized people and continue this conversation in the living room." As he walked into the sitting room (or actually towards the decanter with scotch in the sitting room), he expected Clark to comment on the pile of broken glass and clay on the floor and the TV, but while he must have noticed, Clark said absolutely nothing, just sat down and shook his head when Lex raised a glass at him in question. Lex shrugged and filled it to the brim, drained it in one gulp. Armed with a newly filled glass, he sat down on the couch opposite Clark.

"So," he drawled, once again in control. "About your little problem. Is that over now?"

"Yes. It's completely gone."

"No heat befuddling your brain and getting in the way of social conditioning? No irrepressible desire to ravage me?"

Clark blushed again but refused to rise to the bait. "No. Lex, I'm…"

"Sorry. Yes, so you've told me."

"I won't ever do this again. To you I mean. I…"

"Let's not make promises we might regret later, shall we now, Clark."

Confusion spread over Clark's face. "But I thought…Lex, you can't mean that you want me to do this to you again."

"You're right," Lex said calmly. "I don't. But since you don't have an alternative I'm not going to take away your only option. I told you that I'd be there if this would ever happen again and I meant it. Of course," he continued in a lighter tone, "I'd appreciate it if you didn't wait until you were overcome with lust and wouldn't completely disregarded my personal well-being the next time…and," he drew out the word until it was rendered a nasal hum, "I want to _know_."

"What do you want to know?"

"What happened. Your being in heat. I want to know how it starts, and how often it's going to happen. I'm not asking you to give me a show of your abilities—although I'd surely appreciate it." Clark was silent. "Let's begin," Lex continued briskly, "what happened after you dropped me off at the jetty site. How did you feel, then? And what did you do?"

"I went _home_," Clark said. He sighed. "I was wasted. I slept the entire day, and night; I only woke up a few hours ago. And then I remembered what your arms looked like…"

"Enough about me, I'm fine. So you were worn out, too. Are you ever tired, usually?"

"Of course I am. Not physically, but I do get tired."

"But this was physical?"

"I…I think so, yes."

"Have you kissed Lana lately?"

"Yes, I did, when I woke up, and no, she didn't react to it."

"Why did you blow me?"

"What?!" squeaked Clark. He controlled himself. "I think because…" So he hadn't forgotten about that, nor did he claim that he had. That was interesting. "Because you were fighting me and I…something in me wanted you to stop struggling. I don't know. I like it when Lana does it to me. I guess I thought it might make you more…docile."

_I should have taped this_, Lex thought. "So it wasn't to get me covered with pheromones?"

"How the hell should I know, Lex. I wasn't dropped on this earth with a user manual. My father…my BIOLOGICAL father's full of wisdom but he never came by to give me sex-ed. I only know that by the time I was standing outside your apartment, all I felt was this overwhelming need to get rid of that heat and the knowledge that you were the only person I knew who could help me deal with this. I honestly don't remember much about…our…encounter. And, like I said," he pulled up his shoulders in defense, "call me a stupid country hick but I really didn't know it would hurt you like that. Not that that would have stopped me."

"No," said Lex, amused because the admission was both guilty and proud—Clark didn't know anything about gay sex and was perfectly happy not knowing, even though he wished he had known more than the absolute basics for Lex's sake. He should have gone to Excelsior. He'd have learned a thing or two. "I don't think anything would have stopped you."

"I'm…"

"Ssssh." He took a pondering sip.

"It's just that…I'm usually very, very good at controlling myself. Do you know how easy it is for me to break every single glass I pick up if I don't concentrate? Shaking people's hands is something I have to do with great care or they end up with squashed stumps. I was losing that. It wasn't that I wasn't paying attention, I just COULDN'T judge what was ok and what was going to rip the door out of its hinges. It frightened me to death."

"So as a matter of fact I should be glad I only ended up a little bruised," Lex concluded dryly.

"In hind sight," Clark said, so grave Lex felt a twitch of worry, "I should have found another way to burn through the heat because I could have torn you apart."

Talking about an unpleasant way to die: raping and quartering. Lex repressed a shiver. "Well, you didn't."

"But I could have, and…"

"Clark. Stop incriminating yourself, and stop apologizing. It's tiresome. We're both fine, so let's not create doom scenarios simply so you can speed up your guilt trip. Just stop it, alright? I accept your apology and as long as it won't happen again any time soon I'm still volunteering for repetitions."

"It won't happen any time soon," Clark hastened to reassure him.

"Good."

Clark watched him while he sipped his scotch. "So," he said after a while, clearing his throat. "Are we cool?" Lex nodded. "You're not afraid of me anymore? I don't want you to be scared of me."

"You wouldn't have said that a couple of months ago."

"That was before I became a rapist," Clark said harshly, and Lex winced, because those words coming from Clark Kent upset his world view. "I can deal with you being afraid of me because of something I might write about you, or because I'll stop one of your projects, not because you're afraid I'm going to assault you."

_Maybe, _Lex thought wearily, _I should move to a place where people don't know about my secret projects and actually want to be my friends because they like my company. _"I think that fear is gone."

"You're sure?"

"I think so. Although I must say I would appreciate it if you didn't start hunting for my downfall for the next half year or so." One was enough, thank you.

Clark snorted. "Lex, you're the public's darling at the moment."

"Huh?"

"You just cured Cradle Cancer," Clark said, smiling. "Don't tell me you already forgot. The people love you. They're singing your praise in the streets. I'd have to come up with a whole lot more than an inkling of some illegal project or other to break that devotion."

"Oh, that. Do you think so?"

"Yes," Clark said. "I do think so."

What about proof that his company was responsible for it, and solid evidence that Lex 'I cured your kids!' Luthor had made a great effort to make said proof disappear? Would that do? "Oh," said Lex. He faked a smile. "That's good to know."

They sat in silence for a while. Clark didn't seem to be in a hurry to leave, and Lex was ok having him sit in his drawing room. With the other man as a distraction, his head was calmer, his thoughts less chaotic. When Clark spoke, that uncomfortable shyness had almost left his voice. Apparently apologizing over twenty times diminished even the guilt over rape.

"Did you and Chloe have a fight?"

Lex choked on his drink. "What?" he coughed.

Clark thumbed over his shoulder. "Your ash tray. It used to be an ash tray, right? You seem to have misplaced it. Um, right into that painting."

"Etch, actually," Lex corrected. "It wasn't a painting, it was an etch. And yes, we did have a fight." About me lying to her and her deciding loving me was inferior to bringing out the truth as perceived by the man who tried to kill me. He did not elaborate. Clark didn't ask. He truly seemed to be completely unaware of the reason of their spat.

"Are you going to make up?"

Lex shrugged. "It depends." He cleared his throat, feeling a certain unwanted huskiness in his voice. "I hope so."

"You should, Lex. Chloe's a great girl. She's good for you."

_Oh yeah, she's wonderful. Between you and Chloe I'm slowly losing my mind_. At the same time a spasm of want made his fingers clench around his glass. "I know she's a great girl. You thought so too, before you decided she was great but not the love of your life."

"We both decided that," Clark said defensively. He splayed his fingers over his thighs. "I can't help I keep coming back to Lana. I know it isn't right, lying to her, I mean. But I can't tell her. I mean I…can't. I just can't. I can't bear to lose her, and I will lose her if I tell the truth."

"How can you be so sure? If she really loves you, she won't care."

Clark sneered. "Oh yes," he said softly. "She would. Chloe could handle it. She's different. But Chloe isn't Lana."

"No," Lex said. Lana was curious about things but didn't move heaven and earth to find out about secrets that weren't any of her business. She wasn't as driven as Chloe, nor as smart. He sighed.

"Did you hurt her?" Clark asked, shy and sympathetic, the way he used to be when he was fifteen. "I talked to her on Thursday and I recall she was upset about something, but I can't really remember what she was talking about."

"In a way."

"Did she hurt you?" Clark said it as if he knew exactly how nasty the fairer sex could be.

Oh yes. Yes, she had. "In a way."

"Did you lie to her?" Lex looked up at him, expressionless, and Clark sighed. "Do you want me to talk to her?"

Lex laughed. It had seemed such a good idea yesterday: manipulate Clark into manipulating Chloe. He didn't even need to do any manipulation; Clark, knight in shining armor to every damsel (or evil billionaire) in distress, was willing to take it up for him without even being asked.

God, it would have been funny if it wasn't so sad.

"Nah," he said, bolstered by this offer of friendship despite himself, "Not yet. I'd like to think that I'm able to salvage my own relationship. I appreciate the suggestion, though. I might take you up on it if things don't work out."

Clark smiled. Lex smiled back. He'd just refused, and they both knew it.

"In that case…I'd better get going. I won't give you any advise because you don't want it, but…Chloe likes roses. Pink ones. And she's a chocoholic. You probably knew that already."

"Yes," said Lex, "I know." If it only were that simple. But he nodded and smiled as if Clark's well-meant advise was usable. When the younger man had let himself out, he sat back on the couch and pressed the foot of the glass against his forehead.

Pink roses and chocolate.

Yeah, right.

Sunday arrived and Lex dragged himself out of bed at nine, feeling as if he had repeated the night with his old study friends even though he hadn't touched a drop more than the two glasses of scotch he'd had before closing his laptop and falling face-first into bed. It wasn't the same kind of tiredness as he'd felt after Clark worked him over, just a general fatigue generated by his overall misery. He showered on auto-pilot, skipped breakfast and made a quick Irish coffee instead, hoping the combined bite of alcohol and caffeine would wake him up. It didn't.

The newspapers were indeed singing his praise about Cradle Cancer—one of the kids had given a statement to the Inquisitor and all was well with the world. There was no sign of slander or other unpleasantness. Again, it failed to make him feel better. Glumly, he stared at the remains of his etch, still scattered over the TV.

Time for more drastic measures. He put on a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants and headed down to the basement gym. Two hours later his muscles waved the white flag, while his mind was beaten into its usual razor-sharp shape. He showered for the second time, happy to note that his work-out had significantly aided in making the bruises disappear even if it had reinstated the dull ache in his shoulder.

Wong had sent him the plans for the glass factory, and he made use of his current alertness to go over them and add comments before sending them back. His foreman from the Smallville plant had sent him an email requesting a meeting, and Lex wrote him back to say that he'd be there on Monday. Before he knew it, it was four in the afternoon, and he hastily threw his laptop into his Ferrari to get to LuthorCare before the evening visiting hour would begin. He had planned to visit the children the day before, but Clark had changed his plans. Not today; he wanted to see them before leaving for Smallville in the evening.

Outside, the sky was already dark and snow was drifting down. It wasn't torrential rain, and when he turned on his radio he heard Radiohead, not Mahler, but it would do. He turned on his windshield wipers and left, knowing the remains of ash tray and etch—the proof of his loss of temper—would be cleaned up when he returned.

Seeing Jessica, Ronny and the other children made him both happy and uneasy. They were so cheerful, so grateful—at least, the older children were. Ronny was happy to see him as usual, but he didn't have a clue why he should be grateful. That was good, since he didn't have to be grateful at all.

Lex couldn't stay long; the parents would arrive soon and he didn't have any desire to talk to them. However, when he came to the room Emmy had been moved to, he noticed someone was inside already. A soft voice drifted through the half-open door. He peeked inside and saw a blonde woman sitting on the edge of the girl's bed, whispering sweet nothings to the child and dripping tear drops on her sheet. Not a nurse, then. Emmy's mother? That horrible woman who'd let her daughter get the feeling she was nothing if she had no hair? He stopped, listening to her voice, waiting for a chance to tell her what a self-centered bitch she was.

"Everything's going to be fine, my darling," the woman said, smiling through her tears. She couldn't stop touching her daughter, stroking her cheeks, her arms, kissing her little hands. "You'll be fine, and then I can take you home. Mr. Mobs is waiting for you; he'll be so happy to see you again. He really misses you, you know? I take him out of his cage every day, and then I tell him that you'll be home soon, but I'm sure he'd much rather see you himself."

She went on like that for some time. Emmy drank in her words like it was the water of life, too weak to reply but clearly overjoyed to have her mother with her. Lex, on that very fine line of incidentally overhearing and eavesdropping, silently wondered what kind of animal Mr. Mobs was. A rabbit? Guinea pig? Perhaps a bird of some kind, or a more exotic pet, like a chinchilla. His anger was disappearing like blood covered by fresh snow.

Emmy's mother was exactly what he'd expected: a well-to-do woman, slightly arrogant, well-dressed and made-up, with a select amount of antique rings gracing her slender, manicured fingers and a trim figure. But as she walked out of Emmy's room, gazing back and waving every two steps, she was also a woman who had come very close to losing her child, and however stupid she was, that had wiped away her superiority and left her plain and exhausted, with swollen eyes and run-through mascara, a red nose and a jerking chin. An object of pity, not of rage.

In the hallway, Mrs. Sittard, halted and gave a loud, unladylike sob, and vainly scrubbed her eyes. Her shoulders were shaking. Lex searched in his pocket and came up with a flat package of Kleenex. One of his old 'comfort tissues'; they were always handy to have around in case one stumbled on a woman in tears. He tapped Mrs. Sittard on the shoulder and handed her one. She blindly accepted it with a wet smile, blew her nose and wiped her eyes. Only then she looked up and realized who was standing in front of her.

"Mister Luthor…?"

"Mrs. Sittard." _I would like to tell you how much I detest you, and how I hold you personally responsible for the fact that your daughter is attached to a respirator instead of playing with the rest of the kids who were not told that they were worthless without hair. I think you are a selfish, loathsome female who doesn't deserve the love of such a lovely girl._

But he said nothing. He couldn't, not in the ray of exhausted gratefulness that was suddenly turned upon him. Mrs. Sittard clasped his hand, even though he hadn't offered it. Her eyes were still overflowing, but her smile, though tremulous, was wide and quite beautiful.

"Thank you," she said. "Thank you for all you've done. Thank you for saving my little girl."

"You are welcome," he said, helpless and hating himself more than her. "Really, it was the least I could do."

It took him another five minutes to extract himself from the detested mother's clinging grasp, and when he finally managed to pull away he was thoroughly sick and tired of the whole Cradle Cancer business. All he wanted was out.

_I think my C drive is in need of defragmentation, _he thought to himself as he made his way to the elevator. _It's getting overheated. I should call Chloe. Clark's right, I should just call her. Maybe it isn't too late yet, maybe I can convince her to…God, I just want her back—no! She betrayed me, not the other way around. If anyone should make the first step it's…_

"Wow. That's some deep down digging you're doing," a low voice commented with a trill of laughter. He slowed down, startled, as Valerie Decan fell into pace next to him. "You didn't even notice me. It's good to see you, Lex," she greeted him with that wide smile, and suddenly he didn't want to be subjected to that calm, piercing, gentle brown gaze.

"Valerie. Hi." He gave her his best fake warm smile and strolled on, creating a maximum of space between them in the most leisurely fashion. His face tightened as he heard a quick patter of clicking heels: she was running after him. Fuck.

"Wait up, Lex," she said, catching up with him. "I haven't seen you in ages. I was wondering how you were doing. How are you?"

He presented her a pleasant smile. "Me? I'm fine. How are you? You must be terribly busy…or are things letting up now the children are recovering?" Keep talking about her, her work, the kids. He had continued his purposeful saunter towards the elevator; within a minute he'd be rid of her without even once giving the impression that that was his objective. "I just saw Emmy. She seemed very weak still; I thought she'd recover more quickly."

"She was, quite literally, at death's door," Valerie said. "Even a miracle cure like the one you got us can't repair such a taxed body overnight."

"It's been over a week."

"And it'll be another week before she can start even trying to walk again. She just needs time, Lex. She'll be fine, but she does need time. What about you?"

The fuck? "What do you mean?" he asked amiably. "You mean my injuries? I'm almost completely healed. With my old healing factor back, I…"

"That isn't what I meant," she said.

The elevator was at least another fifty steps ahead. Lex relaxed his shoulders, creating the impression he was totally at ease, at the same time walking just a little faster. "Oh? So what do you mean?" _What do you mean? What do you know?_

She laughed. "Lex, you can't just tell me you're fine when you're looking like this. Don't lie to the person with the psychology background. You look like shit. Is everything ok?"

Lex was mystified. He'd looked in the mirror just before he left and he looked just like he always did. "I must've mistaken my night cream for my day cream again," he drawled, and she snorted.

"You don't use facial creams."

"How would you know?"

"You'd be afraid you'd look gay. Besides, you don't need them."

"At least fifteen magazines are convinced I'm gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide; who's to say they aren't right?"

"You're quoting Pratchett to me now?"

"He's gay too, Pratchett. He has to be with that hat he's always wearing. Let alone that he wrote it together with Neil Gaiman. I mean, '_Gai_man'?"

"You are trying to evade my question."

"What question was that? I think I missed it."

She sighed, and something ominously like concern creased her brow. "Whether you're alright. I get the feeling that you aren't."

"You're wrong," said Lex. He came to a standstill in front of the elevator and pressed the button, hoping it wasn't stuck on the first floor. "I'm perfectly all right." He did not ask her why she thought he shouldn't be fine, mainly because he didn't want to hear it.

"Can I buy you a cup of coffee?"

He almost laughed in her face. "Actually, I was just leaving for Smallville. Business," he added, before she got it into her head that he'd go there for different reasons.

"At five?" she exclaimed. "You'll be stuck in the traffic for hours!"

"It's Sunday. And I don't mind traffic." He managed not to push the elevator button again.

"And it's snowing," Valerie maintained.

"Not heavily. Besides, I have snow tires."

"Oh come on. One cup of coffee. We could talk about the children. Jessica…"

He wasn't about to let her use the children to trap him and hear him out and then flood him with concern. The elevator made a soft humming sound; an indication that it was almost on his current floor.

"I really can't, Valerie. Another time, perhaps?" Ping. He gave her a friendly peck on the cheek and slid into the elevator as the doors opened. There were three other people inside. Valerie Decan's foot hovered between the doors for a few seconds, then, with a glance from his face to those of the other people inside, she pulled back her foot and sighed.

"Ok. But do come by one of these days, will you?"

"Next week," Lex promised glibly. He gave her a smile that made her eyes widen in alarm and sucked it back in before she jumped after him. Yes. Defragmentation was definitely in order. The doors closed. The elevator went down.

TBC


	30. Chapter 30

Quick thank you to people who've reviewed

Quick thank you to people who've reviewed! Off to bed now…

Near future: the end of mope.

Thirty: In which Lex is compared to a coffee bean

The one bad thing about munching, however thoughtlessly, on tomatoes and pears and apples and frieze-dried strawberries whose sun-soaked taste had not diminished at all over the months because they had been lovingly grown in Smallville's meteorite-embedded, rich soil and had been hand-picked, hand-selected and hand-wrapped by Clark Kent, was that after that kind of produce, you couldn't bear to eat plastic-wrapped duds from the supermarket anymore.

It was Sunday evening and Chloe's cold was almost over. She'd finished all of the ice cream, most of the soup, all of the white bread and now she was craving juicy cucumbers and succulent mangos. She wanted a huge slab of dead cow and lots of green stuff to go with it, and fruit, lots of organically grown fruit with thick cream to top it off. Comfort food grown-up. A real meal.

She'd decided she was done moping. Lex had had his chance to come clean with her and he hadn't grabbed it. Fine. Tomorrow she'd go back to work and tomorrow she'd take him on. She was hurt and she didn't understand, but this status quo was helping no one, and damn it, she wanted more fiber.

At six, the only shop selling the kind of vitamins she was looking for was Paulino's Produce. Paulino was what people called vegetable mafia. He was small and Italian in a balding, merry way that made short work of any veggy-based competitor, and besides organic produce he also sold home-made pizzas and fresh pasta. Chloe knew for a fact that he was one of the Kent's regular procurers; she'd once recognized Jonathan's hand in the crates of broccoli stacked in the back of the store, a long time ago, when she'd just moved to Metropolis—Mr. Kent had had a way of hammering in nails in little crosses that was quite distinct.

Paulino's was a ten-minute drive through the snow. She'd bought apples at the super around the corner. They winked at her with snow white-like falseness, all red and gleaming as if painted with a layer of varnish. They were all exactly the same size and smelled like perfume. They looked utterly revolting. The more she looked at them the more she pined for friendly yellow apples with a modest blush and those tiny brown specks that showed that they'd actually grown on trees. The cucumber she'd moronically bought with the snow white apples was hard as stone, just as cold, and stark white on the inside. She could use this cucumber to bludgeon someone to death, and it probably wouldn't even snap. It lay poisonous green and straight on her kitchen table, much like a murder weapon or a snake in rigor mortis, and about as appetizing.

Chloe sought her bag, that traitorous bag that had brought her so much misery but that could hold two kilos of fruit and vegetables with ease, put on her coat and walked the twenty steps to her car with her head ducked down in her collar. It was snowing quite heavily, now, the first real pall they'd had in weeks. The cold made her nose run like a faucet, and she reflected with a healthy amount of sarcasm that Lex would probably find her disgusting if he could see her now.

_And so you see, _she thought. _There's always that little silver lining._

She put her car in reverse, managed to only scrape along the garbage cans lined up on the street, and headed out towards the local vegetable mobster.

Lex called Chloe at precisely six o'clock, fifteen minutes before he was going to reach the left turn that would take him from the Metropolis peripheral onto the road towards Smallville. He could miss three turns, or rather, had three options to turn around and head back, and fifteen minutes to decide whether he would do so.

When he selected her number, he felt a delicate flutter in his stomach, something simultaneously light and heavy, but his mercurial mind remained in the pleasant state of equilibrium it had reached when he had decided he was going to call her after all. For safety reasons he slowed down a little. Just for safety reasons. Metropolis was one of the few cities he knew where traffic was actually worse on Sundays than on, say, Tuesdays or Thursdays. Lots of people from the villages moving back to their city job dwellings, and visiting villagers driving back home to their farms.

The phone rang. One, twice. Of course. She might be feeling vindictive. He listened unperturbedly, and when her voice mail kicked in he left a message as smooth and cool as Pinot Blanc. He was slightly dismayed she hadn't picked up at the first peep from her phone, but hey, she was a woman—or maybe she was in bed and was too late answering his call. Or in the bathroom. Or something else that gave her a good reason to not pick up the phone. He was not unduly worried.

Paulino's store smelled…colorful. There were the odors of Grana and other Italian cheeses, garlic and sausage, the delicious smells of freshly prepared pizza and pastas, and, deeper into the shop, where rows and rows of multi-colored vegetables and fruits were laid out in vivid patterns, sweet, spicy and pungent aromas created an almost-stink Chloe found very appealing. Here, she could let her nose play detective and try to smell out the groceries she was looking for: the sweet tang of apples, the sickly sweet stickiness of mangoes, the full, savory scent of ripe tomatoes.

The shop was cool for preservation reasons but still significantly warmer than outside, and the few customers caressing the wares were steaming up the windows. Most of the shoppers were female, middle-aged and Italian: tiny women who handled the vegetables with experienced hands, touching without squeezing, picking out only those items that would create the perfect cuisine de Mama—or at least, so Chloe fantasized.

She put four yellow-brown bananas in her basket; she'd have to eat them today because tomorrow they'd probably be spoilt but god, they smelled heavenly and she didn't even like bananas very much. Next was zucchini. She had to swallow at that, and rub her eye, but buried any sad feelings under half a pound of delicious apples and two orange-yellow mangoes. Of course the Kents had never been able to grow mangoes. Nor bananas. But somehow, buying this kind of produce always reminded her of her youth in Smallville, of lazy summer days spent with fruit juice on her hands at the farm. Despite everything, she'd loved living in Smallville. It was small and dull, but with a new freak every week, and Clark, and Pete, …and later Lois and Lex, always Lex…huh. She'd been fifteen already when he breezed in. Then how was it possible he made up such a large part of her memories?

"Why, hello," a woman's voice broke through her musings. "Miss Sullivan? It is you, isn't it? What a coincidence meeting you here."

She turned around. Next to her, weighing a pineapple in her hands, was Valerie Decan, looking a hell of a lot less gorgeous without make-up, in blue jeans and with her hair done up in a still-wet pony tail. Her broad mouth was pulled into a half-moon shape by her smile.

"Miss Decan!"

"You can call me Valerie," the other woman said. She put the pineapple back and picked up another one, her eyes flicking briefly over the piece of fruit before returning to Chloe's face. "I never got the chance of thanking you for helping to bring Amy back to us. I understood you played a large part in it. You may well have saved at least two kids' lives, perhaps more—although this new treatment is so amazing it might even have saved Emmy and Michael if Amy hadn't unblocked them…Still. I just wanted to thank you personally." She smiled even wider. "And now I finally can. So, thank you."

"You're welcome," Chloe said, a little baffled.

Valerie nodded. She weighed her pineapple and priced it. "Well, have a good day, then. And if you see Lex, could you please tell him to come by? Emmy's doing so much better and…is something wrong?"

The idea hit her like a flash of lightning. _She's Lex's friend. And she's a psychiatrist, or something like that. _Chloe's mind raced. She didn't like Valerie Decan—_still_ didn't like her, for some reason better left unpondered—but the woman was not unsympathetic. What was more, she might be able to help Chloe. She took a step closer towards the taller woman and put her hand on the fluffy white sleeve of her coat. "Valerie…can I…do you have a moment? I need to talk to you."

"Oh? Well, actually I'm having friends over for dinner…" A quick look of worry flitted over her face. "Does it concern Lex?"

"No," Chloe said. "Yes. I just…really need your help. Just a cup of coffee. Would you mind?"

Valerie checked her watch, then looked from her basket of goods to Chloe's face. Finally, she nodded. "Let me get my tomatoes and three red peppers. I guess I can do one cup of coffee."

"Thanks," said Chloe. "I really appreciate it." She wondered if she really did.

Lex passed his first turn.

The snow whipped down from the sky onto his wind shield with the sound of hail, and he put his wipers into a faster gear.

He called her again, exactly ten minutes past six with the second turn less than 300 yards away. He was nothing if not punctual.

She still didn't pick up. Why on earth wouldn't she pick up the phone? She might be vindictive but she wasn't petty. Was she ill? In bed? Out? She wouldn't forget her phone, would she?

_Maybe she just hasn't returned yet, from whatever it was she was doing. Maybe she's cooking. Didn't hear the ring tone. That's plausible, yes. It is dinner time, after all._

A few seconds the realization came to him: _I didn't have dinner. Huh. I clean forgot._ It didn't matter; he'd have a snack at home, when he got there. He left another message, this one a little less cool—but he could afford to be somewhat contrite. She had betrayed him but yes, he was not entirely blameless. And he wanted her back. It really was that simple. Clark was right, she was a great girl and he wanted her back and what Lex Luthor wanted, he got, even if he had to work for it. Other cheek and all. He shouldn't see this as something to put him down but as a challenge, a dare, if you like. Lex Luthor never passed up on a dare. And he always won.

He just had to talk to her, explain things. He was good at swaying people; she'd come around soon enough. Wouldn't she? Of course she would, there was no way she'd be able to resist him.

He slowed down to let another car pass him by; it zoomed into the turn he might have taken if she'd answered her bloody phone.

Lex frowned. He drummed his gloved fingers on the wheel.

How long did it take a person to cook?

Valerie stirred three large spoons of sugar into her double latte.

_Great, _Chloe thought with unreasonable chagrin, _she's one of those ultra-thin women who devour sugar and fat like it's nothing and never gain an ounce._ She herself stopped after one spoon of sugar.

"Thanks," Valerie said, raising her mug after her first sip.

"You're welcome."

"So, what did you want to see me about?"

"Mm." Chloe pulled a face at the horribly bitter coffee and added two more spoons of sugar. She stirred vigorously. "It's…I found something out. And I…Ugh." This proved even harder than she thought it would. Valerie waited patiently, gave her an encouraging nod. Chloe took a deep breath and started again.

"First, I must tell you that you can't speak about what I'm going to discuss with you. I mean, you can't tell anyone."

"Fair enough."

"I really mean no one at all." Chloe stressed.

"You have my word. If you want, you can have my Hippocratic oath as well. I won't speak of this to anyone."

It was as good as she was going to get. It was too late to turn back now, anyway, and she did, she realized, very much want to know Valerie's professional opinion. "It's…well, it is about Lex." Valerie nodded, a touch of worry in her expression. _She's his friend. That's all. Just his friend. That's why I'm talking to her, right? _She swallowed the feeling that made her eyes flash jealous. "You see, the man who kidnapped us—who shot Lex…"

"Martin Edge."

"Yes. Martin Edge. The reason he wanted to kill Lex was because of certain…projects Lex had started up, and people had…he claimed people died because of those projects." She addressed her coffee mug. "He'd tried to get LuthorCorp convicted for those crimes, but never succeeded, and in the end that made him so desperate he decided that the only way he could make LuthorCorp stop was to kill Lex. That's what he said just before he emptied his gun into Lex's body." She looked up, finding Valerie's eyes resting on hers without expression. This was common knowledge, even if it hadn't been stated by the police. Word had a way to get around, with women like Katie Johansson. Valerie nodded, so she went on, "Lex said he was lying. Up to the point that Edge shot him in the head he said it wasn't true. Later, I asked him again and again he said that Edge was mistaken. But it was Lex who was lying."

Valerie spoke up. "The projects were real?" She did not sound surprised, only intrigued.

"Yes."

"How did you find out?"

Now came the hardest part, which was so hard because she was actually so ashamed of it. "Edge contacted me again. By mail. He told me he had proof of those plans Lex denied existed. I…didn't want to have anything to do with him." She sneered at her coffee. "But in the end I gave in, and I found a lot of highly incriminating evidence. Serious proof. I'm not sure everything will hold up in court, but even a bit of it would badly damage both Lex's reputation and his company's market position."

"Would you want to do that?" the other woman asked. "Damage his reputation and his company?"

"No," Chloe said sharply, "I don't. Of course I don't. But damn it, here he is strutting around on TV and people think he's some kind of savior while in fact he's…" She stopped, pressed her lips firmly together.

"Ah," Valerie murmured. "There's a link between LuthorCorp and Cradle Cancer. That's what you're referring to, isn't it?"

_Damn. She's smart. _Silent, Chloe nodded. Suddenly she was terrified that simply by admitting it, she'd already put Lex on the scaffold. _Wasn't that the fucking point of writing that article? Hadn't I just decided that he had to pay for those crimes?_

Valerie, however, did not show any signs of wanting to shout out the ugly truth. "Or is there a link between _Lex_ and Cradle Cancer?"

"No. As far as I can tell he isn't responsible. I'm not even sure his father is. It was caused by some kind of fertilizer LuthorCorp developed, which was used by the KAS. The file on Cradle Cancer contains emails between a few scientists, one of LuthorCorp, one from the Agricultural Society. They found out that the fertilizer was hazardous, but the KAS had already distributed it to farmers all over the country. You might even say that LuthorCorp and the KAS are both equally to blame…but that's not what upset me. Lex covered it up. There were files and documents on the fertilizer, about its distribution, about its substance. He erased those things. HE did that, not his father, not some other C.E.O., _he_ did."

"And then he built a huge facility where the victims of that poison could be treated."

"But he didn't take responsibility for creating that disease in the first place!" Chloe hissed. "He hid it away! I asked him if LuthorCorp had anything to do with it and he swore to me that it didn't, and it DID! He lied to me, and he lied to Edge, and this isn't the only thing that was in those files." She clenched her fists as her anger flared again, and only stopped when her nails dug into her palms. "He wasn't responsible for the fertilizer disaster," she said hoarsely. "It was before his time. But he made it his responsibility by erasing every trace of it. And there are other things. Things he did start up personally. Projects that got people killed and then hushed up those deaths. Illegal ventures."

She placed her hands flat on the table, then looked up from her spread fingers and shook her head. "I don't know what to do. I…I just don't know what to do anymore. I don't want to hurt him, I really don't. I love Lex. But he lied to me about things that aren't his to keep secret, and now I can't…I feel like I don't know him at all. I mean, how can he do these kinds of things and NOT talk about them? And now that I've found out, what should I do?"

"And you've come to me for advice?" Valerie Decan asked quietly.

Chloe nodded.

"Why me?"

"Because you know him."

"Not very well…"

"But you like him," Chloe insisted. "You're his friend; the two of you are…close." And STILL that rankled. Chloe gritted her teeth and told herself to grow up. "You're a psychiatrist, aren't you, or something like it."

"I'm a _counselor_," Valerie corrected gently. "For _children_. But yes, I did study psychology."

"So maybe you understand why Lex does the things he does," Chloe prodded. "You know how people tick. Me…I don't even know what kind of species he is. I just don't know what to do with this knowledge and…" She sighed. "You're the only one I know who is his friend and whom he seems to trust to some extent."

Valerie smiled a little. "You want me to _analyze_ him? Or do you want me to analyze _you_?"

"What I need," Chloe said, "is an objective view of the whole situation."

"Absolution," the other woman said, and her smile turned somewhat mocking.

"No," Chloe returned. "Whatever I do, I'll do with a clear conscience. But before I decide what to do I'd like you to…I _ask_ you to help me understand him. Lex. Because I don't anymore."

Valerie took a sip of coffee and licked her full lips. "Ok," she said slowly. "Let me get this straight. You are following the lead of the man who threatened to kill you and almost did kill the man you claim you love, and now you are confused as to whether you should ruin that man because you don't understand why he lied to you about covering up those results from his own company that couldn't see daylight?"

Chloe balled her fists again, this time to keep from throwing her mug into the counselor's contemptuous face. "I guess you don't want to give me your views," she said coldly. "Well, sorry to bother you. I was hoping you could help me save Lex from…"

"Oh, do sit down," Valerie said, and the contempt was gone as if it had never been there. She leaned forward, frowning a little. "You're serious, aren't you? You really don't understand how he can be capable of the things you're accusing him of."

"Yes. Yes, I am serious. And no, I don't." She wondered how someone could possibly think she was being anything but serious. "Because what I'm reading doesn't rhyme with the man I know."

"And how well do you know him?" Valerie asked. She held up her hand as Chloe opened her mouth to protest that she was fucking _dating_ him, so she should know him pretty damned well. "I mean, does he ever talk to you? About himself, I mean. About his hopes and dreams, or about the things he fears?"

"We talked all the time," Chloe said, a little angrily. But even as she said it she wondered if that was actually true. Yes, they had filled quite a few hours chatting about all kinds of Lex-related subjects: his factory in China, the Cancer children, the utter boredom of LuthorCorp society. He'd talked about the kind of cars he liked, and people he hated, small childhood incidents—his life at Excelsior, mainly—things that horrified her as much as they interested her, and things he wanted to do in the weekend. But hopes and dreams? He sometimes jokingly (or maybe not so jokingly) said he wanted world domination, to make a difference, but that was about it. And fears? She never thought he was afraid of anything. Nothing tangible, at least. There was plenty hidden in his own head to create a lifetime of nightmares.

"See?" Valerie said. "You know Lex Luthor, but almost nothing beyond what's on the publicly accessible surface. I noticed the same thing. He's very easy to approach, if he lets you…but even when you think you're coming close, he's actually keeping a wide distance. And I think I know why, too."

The third and last turn before Smallville became his definite point of destination was two miles away when Lex called Chloe's number for the third time. By now his mind, so blissfully steady before, was beginning to teeter on the edge of chaos again. He was trying to be high-minded here, couldn't she at least cooperate?

He listened to the tone, once, twice, five, six times before her answerphone kicked in again. A wave of anger and, face it, despondency, rose in his throat, so powerful it momentarily rendered him speechless; then he spoke some tight request for her to pick up and hung up. He held the cell in his hand for another few seconds, breathing through his nose because otherwise he'd be panting with fury, then flung it on the seat next to him with a vicious snap of his wrist. It bounced from the bucket seat and onto the floor. He left it there. The damn thing didn't deserve any better.

When the last turn back to Metropolis became accessible he pressed his lips firmly together, shifted gear, and raced past it, following the road south to Smallville. He cranked up the volume of the radio and experienced a somewhat distorted sense of déjà vu. In December, he couldn't find a single station that didn't play Christmas carols. Now, all he heard was love songs.

If it wasn't Christina Aguilera, it was Norah Jones. If it wasn't some melting woman's voice, it was the Stones, or Jack Johnson, or Louis Armstrong, or, once, even Frank Sinatra. They were all singing about this wonderful thing called love. Even the violent-sounding song by Linking Park was about the relation between a man and a woman, and how fucked up it was. Why the hell couldn't people make songs about flying pigs? Why did the subject always have to be love?

"Damn it!" he burst out, and slammed his fist down on his steering wheel. "Why won't you pick up? Why did you do it? Why did you follow his lead?! You were supposed to be on MY side!" After all she'd said and all she'd done, he'd gotten the feeling that she accepted him, all of him, and knew about the things he kept from her and accepted that too. Yes, he lied to her, but what else could he have done? It wasn't as if telling her the truth would accomplish anything but scare her away—as it had done now.

Why couldn't women understand that? Why couldn't they just let things lie, safely buried; why'd they all have to dig it up and throw it into his face? Why didn't she understand that if he thought she could handle it he would have TOLD her?

He shifted from fifth gear to forth in order to take a turn and was briefly diverted from his thoughts as the car skidded in the snow. He grinned, relishing the moment of controlled total loss of control, then steered correctively and got back on the road. There was very little traffic now. Despite the snow he was sure it wouldn't take him longer than an hour or two to get to his Mansion. He went back to fifth gear, the empty fields on either side of the road blurring to nothingness.

The nothingness reflected his anguish back at him like a mirror, and like a reflection reflected in a mirror his thoughts went round and round. If Chloe published Edge's evidence…His lawyers would probably take care of it. It would dent his image, and it would hurt LuthorCorp, and his father would probably do a coup, even though he was responsible for most of what Edge had dug up. Lex was more careful. The few pieces Chloe could have on his level 3 projects probably wouldn't hold up in court—but some of the older things—_and the Cradle Cancer thing_, his mind whispered, _that very recent triumph of yours_—might.

Still, at most he'd be facing a fine. Even if it ran into millions LuthorCorp laughed at fines. But the public humiliation would be…painful. And what about those kids? What if Jessica found out he WAS responsible for all she'd had to go through? Would Ronny's father come by with a saw-off after all? And afterwards?

Lionel would kill Chloe.

God, and she thought he had been _threatening_ her!

Lionel would KILL her.

Lex was very sure of that. He'd tried once after she had testified against him, and if she endangered the position of either his son or his company, he'd finally break that strange truce they had somehow established and do her away.

_I must talk with her. I must stop her, and the only way I can do that is talk to her. But if she won't talk to me…_He briefly considered calling her a forth time, but decided that if she hadn't picked up after three times, nor called him back after listening to his messages, her reasons for not replying had most likely not changed over the past few minutes.

_Tomorrow. I'll call her again tomorrow morning, if she hasn't called me back before then. And if she still won't pick up, I'll send Clark by to see why she hasn't. And then I'll go back, abduct her and talk some sense into her._

A good, solid plan, worthy of a Luthor. His tumultuous mind settled again. Natalie Imbruglia lamented that she was torn. Lex sneered at her lyrical form lying naked on the floor. _Stupid girl. Luthors don't lie down._

He sped down the whitening road, face calm but his hands clenched tightly around the wheel.

Valerie took another sip of coffee.

"Lex Luthor isn't a person," she said. "It's a _name_. And don't get me wrong, he loves his name. It gives him an identity. But at the same time that identity takes away every personal trait he might exhibit. When people hear the name Luthor they immediately associate it with LuthorCorp and really, he's much more than just the guy who runs LuthorCorp."

"So what do you mean? That he wears a mask? I know that."

"What I mean is that he doesn't seem to think there's anything behind his mask. The man doesn't have a shred of self-esteem."

Chloe laughed. "No self-esteem? Lex? He's the most confident person I know!"

Valerie shook her head. "Look deeper," she said. "Oh, I admit that he is very much convinced of his competence. He's extremely clever—but those are the only aspects that he can rely on: his wealth and his intelligence. For some reason, those are the two things that he lets define him; take it away and he's nothing, or at least, thinks he's nothing."

She frowned, and that frown made Chloe simultaneously like her better and dislike her more, because there was an anger to it, a desire to protect that made her both want to encourage Valerie to defend Lex and to call her off of Chloe's property. And wasn't that just the most twisted thing to think in the world at this moment?

Valerie, oblivious or unmindful of Chloe's mixed emotions, continued her analytical monologue. "Somehow," she said slowly, "he has the feeling that without his wealth, without showing how smart he is and leaving evidence of that—imprinting his knowledge on the world, you might say—he's nothing. Really," she said, with a nod at the espresso machine at the counter, "The man's got a sense of self-worth that's about as crushed as one of those coffee beans."

Chloe smiled, still somewhat disbelieving, but then she realized that, outrageous though it sounded, Valerie might have a point. Because yes, Lex did seem to have an awfully hard time accepting that she'd liked just being with him, and that she didn't necessarily need to go to Paris and shop until she dropped with his master card to have a good time.

"Huh," she said. Now that was a novel idea, Mister I-always-win arrogant Luthor without self-esteem. "So how does that make sense?"

Valerie shrugged. "Somehow he's gotten the idea that he, as a person, is completely worthless. His father, perhaps? I met him once, when LC had just been founded. I got the impression the man was somewhat...difficult. Demanding. Abusive, perhaps?"

"You can say that again," Chloe muttered.

"Mentally, if not physically—The one thing Lex has no problems with is getting close to people physically so I doubt he was ever beaten as a child—not badly, at least."

Chloe looked into her coffee cup. No, she doubted Lionel ever physically abused him. He wouldn't step that low—nor did she think Lex'd accept that. He kept coming back for more verbal torture—come on, Dad, hurt me, hurt me more, tell me how useless I am, anything but ignore me—but he wouldn't let anyone physically get the better of him. Not even his father, she was sure of that. And that wasn't Lionel's style, anyway. He saw Lex as his property more than as his son, and might discipline him, but brutal corporal punishment…she doubted it. He'd just organize something horrible for Lex to go through to 'build character'. He might put him on boarding school where children were whipped, or something like that.

"Well," she said, voicing her thoughts, "I guess if you put your bald freakish son in boarding school..."

"Life can't have been easy for that child," Valerie agreed. "And didn't his mother die of cancer when he was young? And what about his little brother?"

"Mmmm," Chloe ummed. She felt desperately uncomfortable analyzing the man she'd been determined to find despicable. Thinking of Lex as a child always made her feel uncomfortable, and now more than ever. She couldn't help feeling sorry for the poor kid he must have been, and connecting that with the monster Edge was trying to make him out to be was...difficult and confusing. Especially if you also put in a spoonful of raspberry sorbet.

Valerie Decan studied her over steepled fingers. Valerie made Chloe feel uncomfortable too. That remark about Lex not having any trouble getting close physically... "Did you sleep with him?" It came out as blunt as a cudgel and she winced at her own words, but did not back down as the other woman's mouth widened in a slow, somewhat apologetic

smile.

"Why do you want to know?"

"I just do."

Valerie arched her brows. "Fair enough. Yes, I did."

"And?"

"I'm sorry. I didn't know he was seeing you."

Chloe shook her head; she wasn't fishing for an apology—that wasn't due, anyway. "How..." Smooth, Sullivan. "How did you do it?" She cringed. "I mean, how did you..." Aargh. Again that amused expression. Why was it that she always made sure that a potentially embarrassing situation always became even more embarrassing than expected?

Thankfully, Valerie saved her from choking on her foot. "Lex and I are friends," she said. "Nothing more, perhaps less. I like him, and he's damaged. He could do with someone who doesn't judge him for his name."

"I don't..."

"I wasn't implying that you do. Even though you, too, confuse LuthorCorp with Lex Luthor the person. What it comes down to is this." She leaned forward, and her fingers pressed into her chin and cheeks, pulling up the corners of her mouth in a strange crooked grin.

"My only connection with Lex is through the job LuthorCare's given me, and it's a job I love. I don't care what he or his corporation do, have done, or will do. It's none of my business, really. He loves my patients, and they adore him in return. The way he treats them is marvelous, and that's really all I care about. Even if his corporation is responsible for making them this way, he's personally trying to save them, and by doing that he's more than redeemed himself in my views." She pulled away from her fingers, and five spots of white slowly turned red on her face. "I like him," she repeated with

another shrug. "He's funny and intelligent and very sweet for someone that fractured. Why should I feel the need to blame him for things he's not directly responsible for?"

Chloe didn't know whether to admire her for her objectiveness or call her dangerously callous.

"But your patients," she said. "Your kids. How could you not care about the reason they've become the way they are?"

"It isn't my job to care about the how and why. In fact it isn't even my job to cure them. I'm just there to make sure they don't suffer mentally."

"You sound like one of those killer nurses," Chloe grumbled, and Valerie laughed, not in the least insulted.

"I guess I do, at that."

They sat in silence for a moment—an odd silence, but not awkward and not entirely unpleasant. Chloe fiddled with the wrapper of her cookie, her head full of accusations that no longer seemed quite as horrible as they had been. But even if Valerie was right and she shouldn't take everything the name Luthor did at Lex face value…

"He still lied to me," she said. "And he still funded all those horrible projects."

"What would you have done if he'd told you the truth right away?" Valerie asked. "If, when you asked him 'Tell me, is it true that your company poisoned a batch of grain with the result that so many children are now dying of its effects?' he'd have said, 'Yes, that is true.' What would you have done, then?"

_Hauled his sorry ass off to jail. _

_Right. As if._

"I don't know."

"Mm. Tell me, Chloe, you've known him since you were a child. Do you know whether he's ever had anyone he could open up to? Completely? Someone who didn't care about his name or his wealth, someone who associated with him purely because he let them get close enough to like him personally—a friend, I mean, instead of an associate? I highly doubt it, and really, he does deserve better."

_He had_, Chloe thought. _Clark. Clark didn't care a fig about Lex's wealth, but Lex scared him off by playing mad scientist to perfection. Because Mister Kent refused to allow Clark to trust Lex with his secrets, and secrets turn Lex rabid. And Lex absolutely doted on Helen. I never thought she __reciprocated that love, though. She always seemed a little aloof. And in the end she only wanted him for his money, too. Poor thing._

Wait a minute.

Now hang on a minute!

"You're trying to make me feel sorry for him!"

"I'm doing nothing of the sort," Valerie said with a sneaky little smile. "This isn't some counseling session. You asked me to give me my professional views on a person who is no patient of mine, but who happens to be a mutual friend. Someone, I might add," and suddenly there was something cold in her voice, "I wouldn't mind to have become more than my friend."

Before she could control herself Chloe bristled. "If you understand him so much and like him so well, why do you give him up so easily?"

"Because," her mouth quirked, "I caught him at a very vulnerable time, and I doubt he'd ever let down his guard for me to get close enough again."

"More vulnerable than having been shot five times?" Chloe said doubtfully. What on earth had Lex been through with this woman? Death? Trauma? Madness? How long had they known each other anyway?

"Yes," the other woman said. "Oh yes. Much more vulnerable than that."

"I don't believe you," Chloe challenged. Surely nothing could make a man more vulnerable than bleeding out in his shirt sleeves on a snow-covered forest floor?

Valerie wound a stray lock of hair around her finger, regarding her with sardonic eyes. There was something quite hard and jaded in those warm eyes, not exactly hidden but more embedded in the empathy they displayed, which made that glint of iron even more striking.

_She's older than me,_ Chloe realized with a small shock. _And quite a lot older too. Older than Lex as well. _

"Miss Sullivan," Valerie said lightly, "I really don't give a damn what you believe and what you don't believe. You wanted my opinion. You've got it. Do with it whatever you like. I'm not here to tell you what to do, I'm sure you can figure that out on your own. You're a grown woman and a professional reporter; I'm sure you'll cope."

There was sarcasm hidden away somewhere in that sentence, but Chloe couldn't quite find out where, and to whom exactly it was directed. Somehow she got the impression it was not wholly intended for her.

"You think I'm a fool, don't you?" she said.

"No," Valerie said, picking up her purse. The steely glint had not gone—had always been there—but she was smiling again and the only impression Chloe got of her was sympathy. "No, I don't think you're a fool. What I do think is that you should try to figure out what exactly it is _you_ want, and what it is you think _other_ people would want or expect you to do. If your relationship is unsalvageably broken because of his actions and if you cannot live with the proof of his lies, then give him away. He doesn't deserve any better. However, if you aren't sure it really can't be mended anymore… It is easy to judge people," she added, softer. "And even easier to judge a name. And now I've become hypercritical after all, and I'd promised myself that I wouldn't." She stood up, pulled her furry white coat around her. "The only reason I've told you all this," she said as an afterthought while she did up the buttons, "is because I saw the way he reacted to you at the hospital, and the way _you_ reacted to _me_."

"You want me to forgive him?"

"If that is the conclusion you've drawn after our little conversation," another one of those infuriating warm smiles, "by all means. I don't know what's in your head. You do. And if you don't, I suggest you go and try to find out. Now, if you'll excuse me, I really need to get my shopping done before my friends come by. Whatever you decide to do, good luck."

She held out her hand. After a split-second hesitation, Chloe took it and shook it. The woman's grip was strong, businesslike, much like her own. She still disliked her, but she felt a grudging admiration for anyone who could come across this unprejudiced while clearly being so subjective.

"Thanks," she said, not wholly convinced she'd actually been helped.

"You're welcome," Valerie said. She gathered her shoppings, gave Chloe a final smile and walked out into the snow.

Chloe sighed. She finished the last of her coffee—dark roast pulverized Lex with cream and sugar, according to Valerie—and put her own coat on as well. Her head was tired of thinking. She'd just bought enough vegetables and fruits to feed an orphanage; it was high time to consume the better part of that. Besides, it was almost seven.

Chow time. She still needed to buy meat, and maybe one of those one-person bottles of wine.

She started on her first banana in her car.

Only when she arrived home, had slapped her slab of steak into a pan with butter and had sliced up a number of veggies she noticed that she had left without her cell phone: it was still lying in the center of the table.

_So what. It isn't as if he'd ca-…_It was flashing.

Temporarily forgetting about her feast simmering in the kitchen, she approached the table with caution. Yes, the light was definitely blinking. Someone had called her while she was out—_how long? It was about six when I left, and now it's…seven thirty. One and a half hour. I was out for over ninety minutes._

She picked up the flashing thing with little hope but a lot of dreading anticipation and actually gasped as she saw three missed calls. Three helpings of Spaghetti, all missed, and three voice mails. She accessed her voice mail, and listened to the first message. It was calm, short and businesslike:

"Chloe. It's Lex. Please pick up. We need to talk."

The second one had been left ten minutes after the first.

"Chloe. Where are you? Could you please answer the phone? I…Right." Less calm, and even a bit uncertain. It was like balm on a wound. She smiled until she listened to the last message he'd left:

"Chloe, you're in a state of semi-symbiosis with your cell, so could you please do me the courtesy of picking up your fucking phone?"

Now he sounded downright annoyed.

Chloe was a mild-mannered, sweet-tempered girl with not a bad bone in her body. Apart from the first digit of her right index finger. That bone was positively evil. She listened to the messages for another three times, and then she turned off her phone with a vengeful smile. "Tomorrow, Lex," she said gleefully. "Tomorrow."

First thing tomorrow, but still, tomorrow. He'd left her hanging for so long he could practice some patience for now. It had been good, in retrospect, that she'd forgotten to bring her phone along. If she'd answered and have him speak to her she'd probably have caved to anything he wanted—she knew Lex, and she knew herself. And she was deliriously happy that he'd finally called, that he had apparently decided that she was important enough to try to persuade NOT to publish her article. Still, he could wait. She was not going to press the reply button. She was stronger than that.

Humming under her breath, she sailed back into the kitchen. If her steak was a bit singed at the edges, who cared? Lex had called, and he hadn't sounded frightened in any way, so Lionel still didn't know a thing. He'd apologize, she'd make him tell her why he'd lied to her, and then they'd make up and she'd forgive him. She wouldn't make it easy for him. Whether he was, behind that mask of his, really an insecure puppy, he'd seriously damaged her self-esteem. She wanted a good explanation before she was going to kiss his smirking mouth—more, she wanted a peek behind his mask. Behind all of them. She didn't care what it was like behind those masks, but she wanted to see it. He owed her that. But first she was going to have her kingly meal. For the first time in four days, and after gallons of ice cream and soup, she was really hungry again.

And that was good. That way she could face him tomorrow, not haggard and thin, but plump and energetic. With relish, she put her knife to the steak.

For almost two hours, Lex drove with first his old Rammstein cd and later Orff's Carmina Burana (playing on the Classical channel in its entirety) blasting from his speakers. He only knew O Fortuna, that bombastic, ominous-sounding piece of music that was actually about drinking wine and screwing women, but the rest of the Carmina Burana was actually quite interesting as well. What was more, he couldn't understand the lyrics. They were in Latin (which he could read but hardly speak) and early German (which he spoke fluently, but not this early a form), and while they probably were about love as well, at least they didn't depress him.

If he played the music really loud he couldn't hear himself think. And Orff's composition suited the dark rural landscape and the tap of the snow on his window. Here on the deserted roads just before Smallville the snow hadn't been cleaned away, nor was there any sign of a salt truck getting into gear to save the necks of nonchalant drivers like Lex.

He sneered. Dear old Smallville. In weather like this, the good farmers wouldn't likely go any faster than twenty miles an hour. Subconsciously he shifted to a higher gear, put his foot down just a little more. The world faded around him and snow spat in all directions in his wake.

Slow.

Slow people. Slow lives. Restful and even therapeutic, but oh, so slow…

The road bent sharply to the right and he followed it. In past summers he had raced every single dirt path around Smallville to keep from going nuts with boredom. He knew every pothole and every turn; he knew his car and trusted in his own skills as a driver. When he no longer heard the thrum of hard asphalt beneath his wheels but the slush of snow, his heart quickened but only with excitement, not fear.

Until the car started to slide. Lex planted his foot on the brake and steered…and then the road suddenly ended and became ditch. He knew this ditch, too. He'd steered around it exactly 47 times.

Now, he couldn't steer around it.

_This would be a really, really shitty way to die_, he thought in that split second before his front wheels went over. The last thing he saw before his head slammed into his steering wheel was the cheerful red of the digital clock in his dashboard jumping to 20:21.

The first sense that came back to him was hearing. His car was making a soft ticking sound, only partly masked by the soft sound of a violin on the radio. He himself was breathing, the inhales and exhales sounding harsh in the confined space. He became aware first that his head hurt, and second that it was not pillowed on the airbags that, according to the salesman with the winning smile, should have popped out the moment someone kicked his bumper, but on the edge of his steering wheel.

_Someone is going to get sued for this,_ he thought, and pulled away the wheel, moaning. A stream of blood ran down his forehead and pattered on his lap. He blinked at it with a self-deprecating if weary amusement. _Jeez. I'm bleeding AGAIN. And it's only January. That promises a lot of fun for the rest of the year._

He turned on the light above the mirror, squinting at the sudden glare. No trouble focusing, that was good. No concussion, then. And although he was certain to get a beautiful goose egg in all the colors of the rainbow, that wound could hardly be called an injury. Head wounds just bled an awful lot.

_Well, don't I feel lucky today? Some people would really get the wrong idea if I had to be pulled out of a car wreck._

Apart from the gash on his forehead, though, he seemed more or less alright. His neck was a bit sore, his shoulder hurt because his seat belt had dug into it, but since it had been doing that, hurting, for the last two weeks and things would undoubtedly have been much worse without belt, he was willing to ignore that, and everything else functioned just fine. Nor had he been unconscious for long; as he was watching the dashboard clock clicked to 20:28. The car, as well, appeared pretty much ok. It had completely rolled into the ditch and ended up flat on its four wheels again.

When he stumbled out of his Ferrari to check the damage, he found that it was hardly damaged at all. Now that was quality: get the driver all banged up but show nothing but a scratched bumper and a cracked light. The ditch was but a small one; it leveled out a few yards north. Lex supposed he should be grateful. He might have landed in a stream otherwise. As it was he was standing ankle-deep in fine, half-molten shown—which had now soaked through his socks and the first inches of his pants, but was still a hell of a lot better than water. Finding no indication that his car would explode anytime in the near future he got inside again and turned the key in the ignition. The Ferrari purred to life with only one minor hiccup.

"I fucking love this car," he murmured, then hissed when he absentmindedly wiped at the blood on his forehead. "I'm still going sue them."

It occurred to him that he should probably call the police and an ambulance and get the Ferrari towed away and him checked over, or at least have someone pick him up and deliver him safely back home. Driving with a head injury, no matter how minor, was not a very good idea. But damn it, he didn't want the publicity, and if he involved anyone else he was sure to find either his picture or his name in the paper tomorrow, and the last thing he wanted was a certain reporter to think that her breaking up with him had made him suicidal.

He wasn't suicidal.

He was just a careless driver.

His butler could patch him up if he ended up cross-eyed, and otherwise he could take care of himself. He excelled at that, after all.

Turning off the mirror light, he took one more moment to wipe blood from his eyes, strapped himself in again and slowly, very carefully drove out of the ditch and back onto the road.

The Mansion almost looked homey with its yellow-lit windows. By the time he was standing, swaying slightly, in front of its big oaken door he thought he might actually go as far as to call it cozy. Warmth. Light. Iodine. Brandy. Silent butlers.

That opened the door for their employer.

Only it wasn't James' nonaligned face that he saw when the door swung open, but the eager face of Margaret's teenaged daughter in her Snoopy pajamas. The hoped-for impassiveness was withheld: the girl's joyous 'Mister Luthor!' transformed into a wail of alarm when she saw his bloody countenance and pierced his bumped head like an arrow.

"Ohmygod! What happened to you? Did someone attack you again?"

"No," he said, pushing past her into the hallway. "My car slipped." He shook off her hand as it touched his back, which destroyed his precarious grip on balance and made him reel madly before he could steady himself against the wall. "God _damn_ it!"

The girl fluttered around him like an overgrown hummingbird. "Are you ok? Do you need a doctor?"

"No, I don't. What the hell are you doing here anyway?" He pushed himself straight again (leaving a dramatic red hand print on the wall), searching and finding his equilibrium. "Close the door," he added, gently this time. "You'll catch a cold."

She kicked it closed with a slippered foot. "Mister Laures went to see his sister today," she explained, and Lex groaned inwardly, because he remembered James asking him leave a week ago. "He was supposed to be back half an hour ago," she went on, again trying to get him out of his coat. "I think he must've been caught in the traffic. I checked the internet: the snow's messing up all the roads. And my Mom's sick. I'm on watch duty. Charlie's checking the alarm system. The snow's fucked u—sorry, the snow's jammed one of the security cams. Are you sure you don't need a doctor? That looks really painful."

"I'll be fine," he said, not having heard a thing she'd said. He turned towards the stairs.

"Are you sure? You don't look fine."

He managed a crooked smile. "I didn't say I was fine, I said I would be fine."

"Do you need help with your head? You know, bandaging it? What if you have a concussion."

"Debby…"

"It's Debra."

Lex blinked. "Your mother always calls you Deb."

"You can call me Deb as well."

"I don't have a concussion. It looks worse than it is."

"How can you be sure you don't have a concussion? My mom says…"

"Deb. I don't have a concussion. I'll take care of it. Why don't you go to bed?"

"Shall I make you some tea?" the girl asked, completely disregarding anything he was saying. "Mom says nothing's better when you've had a shock than a cup of hot, sweet tea. And I'm on guard duty until Charlie comes back, so I can't go to bed yet." She shot him a wide, concerned smile. The hall light glinted on her braces.

Another high school kid.

What the hell was it about him that drew them to him and how could he get rid of it?

She was still staring up at him as if he was worth being idolized, and suddenly he was too exhausted to even try to fight.

"Fine," he said tonelessly. "That sounds great. Make me some tea. I'm going up. Knock before you enter, will you?"

"Sure will, Mister Luthor!" she chirped, and took herself and her Snoopy pajamas into the kitchen—but not before she had shot him a motherly smile.

Lex sighed. _I don't want tea. I want a bottle of Lagavulin and a bottle of aspirin. _

He regarded the stairs with weary resignation. _I want someone to care without caring. I want to…_ A drop of blood fell from the tip of his nose and landed on the carpet with a small wet splodge.

_I want to stop bleeding._

He put his foot on the first step. One step at the time, and he'd get where he wanted to be.

Lex worked quickly, because he'd be damned if he'd let some teen girl with a crush play nurse over him. He had taken off his wet socks, his blood-stained shirt and his pants, put on a pair of ratty sweatpants he hadn't been aware he'd had, moved a chair into his bathroom and was now sitting in front of the basin, dabbing at the bloody tracks on his face with a wash cloth. It really was amazing how much small wounds like these bled. As far as he could see through the flood, the actual wound was quite small, it just kept bleeding—although the flow now seemed to be diminishing.

_Great. I'm running out of towels._

The bathroom looked like a slaughterer's wet dream; red smears and stained towels and clothes wherever the eye could see. Lex pressed the cloth against his forehead again, hissing softly. Already a lump was rapidly gaining size right in the middle of his brow, and he knew it would take him at least two days to get rid of it.

_Imagine I'd still be normal. Well, thankfully that's not an issue anymore._

He pulled the cloth away and stared at the wound, sighing in relief as it didn't immediately overflow again. Then he frowned (which hurt and made him grimace, which hurt even more), leaned forward. The shape of that cut…

"No. No, you've got to be kidding me." A trickle of blood threatened to run down and he used the wash cloth, then studied the gash again. Despite himself, his mouth quivered. "I'll be damned. Now that…" he sniggered. "That's funny." While he kept his eyes on the beautiful clean-cut shape featuring bright red in the middle of a bruise the size of a hen's egg, he began to laugh, helplessly, silently, until his sides ached and tears formed in his eyes, because fuck it if it wasn't so goddamn hilarious it could have come out of a comedy.

His Ferrari's logo. The prancing horse.

When his head had hit the wheel it must have smashed into the logo and now…

The head of the horse of the fucking Ferrari logo was stamped into his forehead. Now THAT would be a scar he'd like to see. Proudly, the horse's head regarded him from just above the bridge of his nose.

Lex laughed harder, he had to press his fists against his mouth not to howl like a lunatic. He laughed until tears streamed down his face and his throat ached, because it was that funny even though it really hurt like hell.

So fucking hilarious.

God, what am I going to do?

"Mister Luthor?" A child's hand rapped the door. "I've got your tea. Are you okay in there?"

_And that, _Lex thought, _is what I am going to do. Pretend to be ok. Drink tea._ He wiped his face with the wet tip of a towel, removing the tears and the blood, and grinned sarcastically at his fucked-up appearance. _No way in hell even a kid is going to fall for 'ok' while I'm looking like this._

"Just leave it outside, will you?" he said. His voice, unlike his face, was as calm and collected as if he were lounging in bed, browsing through the AEX. "I'm still cleaning up."

"You need any help?"

"No. Go to bed, Deb. I relieve you of your duty."

"That's ok."

"Deb." Lex leaned his head in his hands. He tried to put some parental authority in his tone, since ordinary commands did not seem to come through. If the girl'd actually been one of his staff he'd have fired her after the first time she talked back, but unfortunately she wasn't. She was just another stupid teenager trying to be friendly and blind to the fact that it really wasn't appreciated. "Go to bed. Don't you have school tomorrow?"

A stubborn silence, then an unwilling, "…Yes."

"Just leave the tea outside and go to bed. Please." That ought to do it. It did do it.

"Ok." She paused. "I…I just wanted to make sure you're alright. That's all."

But it wouldn't do at all.

Lex sighed. What a bother. He gave his face a final swipe, got up, went over to the door and opened it. She was still standing outside with the tea tray held out like an offering. Lex took it from her and placed it on a side table inside his room.

"See?" he said, gesturing to his face. "I'm fine. It's just a bump."

She nodded. "I added an ice pack. Does it hurt very badly?"

He shrugged. "As much as any bump. But I heal very fast. I'll be fine by tomorrow."

Deb looked doubtful, but nodded again. Her eyes traveled from his face to his body, and he wished he'd put on a shirt. There was nothing sexual in the way the girl was appraising him; rather she frowned as her eyes went from one shot wound scar to the other, and dipped with pity as she regarded the red weal the seat belt had dug across his chest when it caught his weight when the car went down. _Should've seen me after my best male friend raped me, kid. _She still seemed to be waiting for something. Lex wracked his brain for what it could be so he could say it so she would leave. It came to him as he watched her fingers fidget with the sleeve of her Snoopy p.j.s: Snoopy and Woodstock in a loving embrace, surrounded by a gazillion hearts.

"I got your card, by the way. When I was in the hospital. Thanks."

And mortification did what cold command had failed to do: she left. She blushed, stammered, smiled and beamed, and left. Skipping.

Lex closed his door, looked at the tea, shrugged and poured himself a cup. Not Jasmine tea, or any of his imported Oolong blends, just Pickwick Earl Gray from a tea bag. She had also added the pot of honey and a spoon. And a plate with ginger snaps.

_Kids… god, kids…_The steam made his eyes tear, and he wiped them off with the ice pack. The cold did feel good against his pounding forehead. Not a concussion, he knew what that felt like and this wasn't it, but it did hurt and he was feeling a bit weird and cold inside, if not exactly nauseous.

_Well, I didn't eat. Of course I'm somewhat unsteady, my blood sugar's probably low, and I'm almost certainly in a very mild state of shock._ He dipped a ginger snap into his tea and ate it, picked up the second one and munched that one as well. In the end he took the plate and his refilled mug with him to the bed, balanced the ice pack between his eyebrows and fell asleep so fast and unexpectedly he didn't even finish his tea.

Chloe was weak. She scolded herself for being weak. It didn't stop her from calling Spaghetti at ten thirty in the evening.

Lex did not pick up.

"Well, there you have it," she told herself, disconnecting when she heard the first few words of his voice mail. "Should have left him waiting."

But when she went to bed she was still feeling calm and happy. Lex wasn't like her: he didn't not answer his phone out of spite—unless it was his dad calling. He probably hadn't heard it. He'd probably check it later, and see that she had called. Maybe he'd call her back, but knowing him, he'd wait until she called him again.

"Tomorrow, then," she said, and turned off her light.

Lex was woken by a gentle but insistent shaking and a soft calling of his name.

"Lex? Sir? I'm sorry sir, but could you please wake up? Can you hear me, sir? Lex?"

He came to life with a moan of denial that seemed to come from the tips of his toes.

"Go…away…"

The hand on his shoulder stilled, but did not release him. "Sir, could you please open your eyes? Please."

Lex opened eyes that wanted nothing but to stay closed. A faint light stabbed him right through the pupils and he covered his face with his hands, producing more moans and hating the fact that he couldn't make himself shut up.

"For fuck's sake, James, what the hell do you want?"

"I just arrived," his butler said apologetically. "I ran into Miss Deb. She told me you had an accident and she was worried you might be…hurt."

"Lord save me from overprotective teenagers," Lex grumbled. He gingerly pulled one hand away. There was a strange lump in the inner corner of his eye, but the light didn't hurt so much anymore. It was only the light from the hallway, streaming in from the half-open door. "I'm fine." He dropped the other hand as well and gave his butler a cold glare. Unfortunately he couldn't keep his eyes open for longer than a few seconds because of the blinding headache that had moved in when he awoke—damn James for waking him up! Otherwise he'd just have slept through it and woken up feeling only slightly sore.

"Miss Deb thought you might have a concussion. I deemed it prudent to wake you up; if you do have a concussion…"

"James," Lex ground out between gritted teeth, "I suffer from concussions on a semi-weekly basis. Trust me, I know what they feel like; I'm pretty much of an expert. I don't have a concussion. I just have a cut in the shape of a horse on my head and a really bad headache and I desperately want to go back to sleep. So give me a couple of aspirins and some water and get your over-concerned ass out of my room."

"Of course, sir," James said unperturbedly, and went to fetch what he'd been ordered to. "Are you sure I shouldn't call the doctor, just in case?"

"Very."

"Very well, sir. At what time would you like to have your breakfast?"

Lex was startled into a laugh, defeated by practicality. "I don't know. When I get up." Johnson at the plant didn't expect him before ten. Lex could sleep in if he felt the need. He brought a finger to the strange obstruction in the center of his sight and found out that it was the lump on his forehead. It had grown. Wonderful. If he had any appointments that involved the possibility of the media being present he'd have to cancel them. Getting shot was one thing, but appearing in the papers with an entirely altered face structure would be bad for his image. "Just make sure coffee is available. In large quantities."

"Yes sir. Good night, sir." After a final expectant hesitation (James actually seemed to hope Lex would start chucking up so he could call a doctor and be right about that concussion), the butler floated out of the room and closed the door behind him. Lex gave another moan, this time of relief that the light was gone. He gently probed the bruise, wondering if he were vain enough to go to the bathroom and see how bad it really was, but decided against it. Not even vanity could drag him out of bed at the moment; he simply hurt too much. Besides, he was sure there would be plenty of it left in the morning to make him consider jumping from the crenels.

Rearranging the ice pack, Lex closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

TBC

Lex doesn't need Clark to get out of a car crash 


	31. Chapter 31

Hello Hello! Thanks for the reviews—I forgot the last time. This chapter's a bit of a stage setter again—also, I couldn't resist a little more Lionel/Lex interaction  Next chapter will be posted pretty soon, maybe one or two days later. It's mostly finished but needs some final tweaking. Up to then, have fun with this!

Thirty-one: In which Chloe watches pictures and Lex chases cats

The lump on his forehead made him look like a dog.

Lex studied his reflection with wide-eyed perplexity. Somehow, he had managed to be hit at such an angle that the lump seamlessly filled up the indent between nose and forehead, and now his nose, which was already quite long, had turned into a snout, and he looked like a dog. Especially en profile. He had a fucking SNOUT.

The pain had lessened dramatically and would probably disappear completely with a few codeines and a glass of brandy, and even the color spectrum hadn't fully powered up yet, but hell! He had a SNOUT!!

A snout with a now somewhat ragged horse's head in the center.

"Christ, just shoot me," he snorted, not knowing whether to laugh at himself or become depressed.

It was a little past eight. He would have liked to sleep a bit more, but had woken up a few minutes ago, when Margaret had sneaked in with the intention to have his bathroom cleaned before he woke up. James must have told her he'd messed it up. She'd let out a muffled scream, reminding him that he probably should have at least put all the blood-stained towels into the laundry basket instead of leaving them strewn around. And he probably should have made some efforts at cleaning the basin, too. When she came running out, straight towards him, and regarded him with the whites of her eyes showing all around her iris, he got an inkling of what he looked like.

"Good morning, Margaret," he had said, sitting up in bed and squinting dizzily at the light.

"Muh-muh-morning," she's stuttered back. "You…your…"

"I'm fine, thank you."

"But your…your head…" Finding no words to describe what he would later identify as a snout himself, she simply pointed at her own forehead. If he'd be of a more sensitive breed, he might have been insulted. It was as if she were telling him he was crazy.

"Yes," he said, maintaining his cool but starting to get vaguely worried. "I know."

"Do you feel all right?"

"Surprisingly so." He did feel fine, apart from the dull pain of smashed skin and shaken bones. He must have slept for over ten hours and that had done a lot to restore him. The welt of the seat belt had faded to the faintest blue. Lex had good hopes that one of these days, his body might be completely pink again—apart from the more resilient scars from the various shooting accidents. His eye fell on the saucer with ginger snaps. James had removed the cup of cold tea and the glass of water Lex had used to swallow his aspirins, but he had left the cookies. Seeing them made Lex smile. "Margaret?"

"Yes sir?" She looked up from the pile of bloody towels.

"If you see Deb, please tell her I said thank you."

She just stared at him. Margaret sang like a tone deaf angel, but she never talked much.

"Your daughter took care of me, yesterday, when I just came in. I don't think I expressed my gratitude very well. She was very considerate."

"She's a good girl," Margaret agreed, smiling. Her teeth were somewhat crooked. Lex was happy that Deb was wearing braces.

He nodded. "Is there something I might give her? Just as a sign of appreciation?"

Margaret's smile changed, growing both wider but also prouder. "For providing you with an ice pack and a cup of tea after an accident? No, sir, you don' need to give her anything; that's all part of her upbringing. If people are in need, you should help them, and that's a fact. She doesn't expect anything in return."

"Oh," Lex said, deflating.

Margaret picked up the basket with towels. "She might 'preciate it if you told her thank you in person, though," she suggested.

"It might be days before I see her again," Lex protested.

"It won't if I ask her to help me beat the carpets this afternoon," Margaret said. Lex regarded her with appreciation. Scheming women, in his opinion, were always worthy of admiration. "She'll be home from school at about four," the woman continued. "If you can find the time…" she halted, face growing suddenly uncertain as she realized she was telling her employer how to behave himself.

Lex smirked. "If I can, I'll come by," he assured her. Rendered speechless once again, she nodded. "Would you tell James I'm up and expecting breakfast in twenty minutes?"

"Yessir."

Five minutes later he stood in front of the mirror and concluded he'd grown a snout overnight. He showered and subjected the bruise to a lengthy soak in ice cold water, but all that accomplished was that he chilled himself to the bone and had to get back on temperature by turning the tap to blasting heat. After dressing himself, he experimented with a couple of creams, but that did nothing to mask either his bruise or the scabbed-over horse's head. In the end he just put a big band aid over it, which did drew attention to his forehead but covered the wound and the swelling, and made him look a little less like a Doberman.

He went down to breakfast with a self-deprecating smirk on his face, took the codeine James served him together with the toast and jam and informed after his Ferrari.

"It's been taken to the garage by Mister Falls," James said evenly.

"My laptop?"

"I took it from the trunk."

"Good." He took a bite of toast, then sat up with a start. "My phone?"

James, in mid-zoom to the door, halted and turned back around. "Your phone, sir?"

"Yes, my phone."

"I didn't see it, sir."

"It would have been on the floor in front of the passenger seat. Or maybe underneath it."

James didn't even blink. He was used to broken televisions, bleeding knuckles and bent golf clubs; phones on the floor of a car didn't faze him. "I…see. Then I'm afraid your phone's still in the car, sir. And since I told Mister Buckley you would be severely displeased if it took more than twenty-four hours for your car to be fixed and returned to you, I rather fear they've already taken it to Metropolis to replace the broken light and the bumper."

Lex almost, but not quite, whined. If people were afraid of Luthor authority, they were downright terrified of Luthor authority transmitted through the British-accented bone-dry voice of his butler. He did not doubt for a second that the moment Charlie got out of his Ferrari, Buckley or his son, with this voice still echoing in his ears, had snatched the keys from Charlie's fingers, driven the car onto a transportation vehicle and raced off to Metropolis.

"I will contact Mister Buckley straightaway and tell him to find your phone and take it back with him when he comes back," James proposed. "Or to have it sent back with someone else if that person were to return to Smallville sooner than him. You should have it back this afternoon."

_Too late!_ Lex thought. _Too late! She might have called me back already. Damn it!_ There was pretty little he could do about it, though. Even driving to Metropolis himself—which he couldn't do until after his appointment at the plant, and he wasn't desperate enough to cancel that because of a missing phone—would not give him the cell back any faster. He might send Charlie to pick it up, but even then it would take more than six hours—the man never had a single speeding ticket in his life.

He gave a brisk nod that made his head pound like crazy. "Yes, do that," he ground out, holding his temples together with his fingertips until he was certain his skull wasn't going to come apart at the seams. "I'll just…use my old phone in the meantime."

"Very well, sir." James did not move.

"I do not have a concussion, James."

"No, sir."

"Go forth and save my phone."

"Yes, sir." Exit James.

Lex waited until the pain eased before raising his head from his fingers. As long as he didn't make any brusque movements he was fine, but sudden shifts or jerks were out of the question if he didn't want to lose his breakfast. He should probably ask Charlie to take him to the plant. The man might be slow as a snail but at least the chance of him turning corners on two wheels was next to nil.

_And thus I degenerate even further_, he thought cynically as he drank his orange juice. _I've lost my girlfriend, my car, my phone, and my ability to drive. What's next?_

Next, it seemed, was him finishing breakfast, brushing his teeth and trying to locate his old phone. He couldn't find it at first, and for a moment he was afraid he'd put it in the blender, like he had done with an assortment of old or malfunctioning equipment.

(That was a geek thing: putting tools in the blender to see how they exploded. Lex called it combustion therapy. He'd picked it up from his IT department. The boys at the minus second floor of LuthorCorp Towers blasted all their old trigger ball mice to smithereens in a blender and filmed it with a high-resolution web cam, playing it back in slow motion to see which part flew where, and how fast. Lex had watched the various movies with interest. The very next morning he had abducted the blender from his kitchen and fed it in succession his own mouse, a broken travel alarm, and some small mechanical gadgets he'd picked up at a trade event. He'd thought the instant, controlled destruction highly therapeutic. Mary's untimely intervention stopped him from trying to blend a CD-ROM drive—so old-fashioned, CDs. Whoever still used CD drives when there were DVDs?—and, indeed, from further experimentation at his office, but at home he spent the occasional gleeful minute observing the swift and total annihilation of several old apparatuses by blender.)

In the end he found the old cell back in a drawer, together with its adapter. It was completely empty, but he could recharge it at the plant. Tucking both adapter and phone into his pocket, Lex collected his laptop, whistled for Charlie Falls and set off for the Smallville fertilizer plant, hoping no photographers would be present.

Chloe called Lex again at nine in the morning. Nine, she figured, was a good time to call someone. She was back at work, had started up her computer and even answered a few requests by email, and now she leaned her back against the wall just outside the toilet and listened to the tone repeating and repeating until it switched to voice mail.

She frowned, bemused. For as long as she'd known Lex, he had never, ever, failed to answer his cell phone. He was physically unable to not pick up, somehow. Maybe it was a Luthor thing: Luthors do not ignore their cell phones.

But now he was not picking up, and that bothered her.

Why wouldn't he pick up?

(and no, she did _not_ have that flash of Lex with a gun pressed against his head, nor that picture of a red Ferrari tearing 180 miles an hour off the road into a ravine; he was reckless, and sometimes downright insane, but he wouldn't kill himself, she was certain of that. Kidnappers, however…)

"He probably has a good reason," she told herself. "Maybe that's why he called me yesterday; to tell me he wouldn't be available today." But he hadn't answered that evening either. She tapped the Nokia against her teeth, considering. Part of her was quick to become white-hot with anger again, but another part of her was seriously worried. Where the hell was he? Maybe she could email him. He might forget or lose his phone, but wherever he was, he always checked his email.

She sent him a text message: _Lex where are you?_ and walked back to her desk. Her Intranet mail icon was blinking; she opened her Jabber window and sighed at the message: _Meeting, my office, Sullivan, Johansson, Lane and Munroe, 9:30. Rehabilitation feature_. She'd scanned mails about the Rehabilitation feature. Apparently it had something to do with a news item about young criminals that had been 're-educated' and were now released back into society. It had sounded interesting. At any other moment she'd have loved to follow a couple of ex-criminal teenagers around and see how they were doing, but right now they could shoot up and drown in the canal for all she cared.

Where the hell was Lex?

She typed out an email and sent it to every mail address she remembered, then, with a grunt of annoyance, read up on the Rehabilitation item and hastened to Perry's office.

Perry was nothing if not thorough. He was often harsh, insensitive, and demanding like a slave-driver, but at times the brilliant journalist he had once been and the skills he'd honed to razor sharpness in order to cut away the opposition shone through, and if that happened, he was nothing short of awe-inspiring.

For some reason Perry's interest was piqued by re-educated youngsters, and he had devised a detailed plan on how to follow their progress as promising members of society instead of trash. The program, he told his small group of reporters as they crowded his smoke-saturated office, would span one year, and the kids they were following had to be contacted twice a week in the first three months, once a week in the next four months, and once every two weeks for the last five months. 'Contacted' meant tackled and dragged into a coffee shop and interviewed if it had to be under duress, Perry said with a smile of anticipation. He handed out a short CV of every child—'Great,' Lois sighed, as she studied her girl's, 'I get the crack-addicted thieving pregnant seventeen-year-old. And, let me check…yes, abused as a child. Thanks, Perry. I'm so looking forward to this.'—and police statements proving that they were authorized to trail and track the youngster as named on the statement, all signed by Commissioner Falkland of the North and West Met-PD.

After supplying his employees with stacks of papers, pictures and phone numbers he launched into a spirited speech about the tender souls they could help save, a speech that ended with a note on subscribers, edition numbers and how hot the subject of ex-felonious children was.

By the time he finally released his group of reporters, they were all slightly dazed, and it was nearly eleven. Lois sputtered, growing more voluble the further she got from Perry's office.

"ANOTHER goddamn teen-preg! Why oh why do I keep getting these kids? Can I have yours, Chloe? You can have…Christin. And her baby, you can have that too. That's a generous offer, isn't it?"

"An offer I fear I must decline," Chloe said morosely. "I'm not swapping my Hope and her self-abusive tendencies and armed robbery at the age of fourteen for any plain old teen-mom. Sorry." Inwardly she was cursing. She didn't give a damn about Hope and her sad story. She had no desire whatsoever to meet her tomorrow afternoon, either. Nor did she feel like writing a report on the stunning new exhibit by hotshot artist Nelson Fetter that was opening its doors at two today.

Lois chatted on and on, while Chloe tuned out her voice and checked her phone for messages. None. She assured Lois she was doing just great but had a great many things to check up on and went back to her computer. No mail—none from Lex, anyway. Nervously she chewed on a lock of hair. Now she finally wanted to make up he was no longer available. Really, the man was a total dick.

_Maybe he's lying on the floor of his apartment with a fallen-down chandelier on his head._

He hadn't been shot, kidnapped or tortured, of that she was sure. She'd have seen it on the news if he had. That was the whole question: where was he, and why couldn't he be reached? She had the urge to walk out the Planet's doors and head over to his penthouse to see if he were home.

Nonsense.

She had too much to do.

An unfortunate fact.

She stared at the huge list of red exclamation-marked messages, heaved another annoyed sigh and started to work through them.

At the plant, Lex barely managed to plug in his cell before Johnson whisked him away to what turned out to be not, as Johnson had feared, a mere electrical failure of a safety switch but a life-threatening situation with one of the processing machines. It was just starting to spark when Lex entered the vicinity ('Oh.' Johnson muttered as the switch crackled with electricity and blue fire, 'it didn't do that yesterday.') and a strong smell of chemicals and chicken shit wafted from the containers on both sides.

"Johnson," Lex asked, regarding the sparks with stoic dread. "Why did you call me and not an electrician?"

"It…I noticed an irregularity in the production of the machine," Johnson said weakly. "I didn't actually think it was broken. I was going to propose having it replaced."

The machine emitted a flame of three and a half foot, gave a loud bang and rumbled to a stop. Sprinklers turned on and steadily began to soak the entire area, including those who were standing in it. Something small and striped hissed in disgust, fled from underneath the machine and fled to the other side of the hall.

"I think it may be broken after all," Lex said dryly. He rubbed his dripping forehead. At the band aid was waterproof. Too bad of the suit, though. He should know better than to wear suits to a shit plant. It was at that moment that the machine standing on the other side of the hall began to crackle and spark as well. "I suggest you call in the techs," he added, taking a step back. And at that point the fire alarm went off in another part of the compound. "And the fire brigade."

Maybe it was because he'd been under so much stress lately. Or maybe he did have a concussion and was bleeding quietly into the part of his brain that regulated his sense of humor. Or maybe this train of disasters was simply funny; whatever it was, Lex felt detached amusement rather than alarm.

He shot Johnson, who was regarding him with horrified eyes as wide as saucers, a snarky grin. "Seems like calling me was the right thing to do. Were you expecting any terrorist attacks?" _Because terrorists are known to target fertilizer plants_. He repressed a chuckle.

"No!" Johnson wailed. He hadn't even taken the time to comment on Lex's battered countenance. Well, it could hardly get any more battered, with his suit slicked to his body and a steady stream of water sloshing from his right pant leg.

"Then I think we're dealing with a large-scale malfunctioning here," Lex said cheerfully. Another alarm whooped into existence. Employees came running from every direction. The noise was deafening. Two small creatures running on four legs raced past Lex, away from the din. They, as well, came out of the main building. "Shall we go?" Lex asked, taking a step towards the passage the people were running out of. "I'd like to see what's going on."

Meteor freak? Probably. The only question is, what kind of freak? The kind that eats electricity or generates it?

"Don't you think…" Johnson protested, but Lex shook his head.

"No," he said. "I don't. Come along, Johnson. I didn't make you foreman for nothing." Before the man could voice another, undoubtedly sensible protest, Lex had dashed into the corridor. Smallville. God, he'd missed this place.

During her early lunch break Chloe hopped into her car and drove to Lex's pent house. However, when she entered the building and wanted to take the elevator, the guard at the front desk called her by her last name and stopped her.

"Miss Sullivan," he said, walking up to her. This was the nice guard, she was happy to see, the one who answered her smile if she turned on her wattage. What was his name again? Vincent? Victor?

"I wanted to see if L—if Mister Luthor was in," she said, and held up her key. "I have the key to the apartment. It's ok."

"Mister Luthor is not in," Victor said. "I'm really sorry miss, but I am not allowed to let anyone go through without his permission."

So that particular privilege had been revoked. Or maybe coming here without his permission, even with a key, had never been part of the privilege. "Are you sure?"

"Yes ma'am. He isn't in."

"He could be…you know. He doesn't answer his phone. Are you sure he isn't up there?"

"Positive. He left yesterday evening," the guard explained.

"He LEFT?" she asked. "Where to?"

"I am not permitted…" Victor started, but Chloe stamped her foot on the ground, waved her Nokia into his face and snarled, "He called me yesterday with the request to call back, and I haven't been able to reach him ever since. He could be lying in a ditch somewhere, or upside-down in a creek, or…I don't know. Just tell me where he is and I'LL deal with Mister Luthor's anger if he finds out you told where he went, ok? I mean, cut me some slack here, will you? I need to know where he is, and I need to know it right now!"

The straight-faced Victor's mouth trembled. Chloe groaned inwardly. She was painting a very pretty 'HE DITCHED ME' picture, and that wasn't even the truth.

"Smallville," Victor said curtly, with a nod of his head.

"He went to _Smallville_? What on earth for?"

"That, Ma'am, I wouldn't know."

"Did he say when he'd return?"

"No Ma'am."

"Right." She thanked Victor for his help and marched out of the penthouse again, ferociously chewing on the cord of her hood. Smallville. Small town of broken phone lines and snow-covered electricity networks. Right. That would explain. It was highly unlikely both phone and electricity would be unavailable, but that COULD be an explanation.

While she unwrapped a sandwich in her car, she checked her organizer. There was that art exhibition at two, and she guessed she had to prepare for the interview with cute little criminal Hope tomorrow afternoon.

How long would it take to see all the paintings at an exhibition? Ten minutes? Maybe fifteen. No, more; he'd probably make a speech. If she left at a quarter to three max…no, she couldn't. She was supposed to hand in that article for next morning's issue, and if she went to see Lex in Smallville this evening she was sure there would be a lot of activity but she doubted it included her typing out descriptions of Fetter's artistic prowess.

On the other hand… "If I bring my laptop and type out my notes during a quick dinner on the way I can be in Smallville before eight." She could always ask Clark to cover for her. He was good at that. He'd probably go to that dreadful exhibition in her place if she asked him nicely, but that would be wrong. Besides, his writing style was way different from hers. No, she'd stick to her current plan: Collect her laptop and her poisonous baby, go to Fetter's exhibit as planned and kick Lex's ass in the evening.

Yes. She could run with that.

Chloe crammed the rest of her sandwich into her mouth, turned the key in the ignition and drove off, narrowly missing a pizza courier on a scooter. The young man flipped her the bird. She reciprocated with verve.

"Watch it, bozo. Or it'll be YOU I'm meeting for my next Rehabilitation program."

Lex returned to the Mansion at a little before four, still slightly damp, with smoke stains on his face and hands, shivering with cold, exhausted and with a headache, but strangely satisfied.

The riddle of the defects at the plant had been solved—if not the problem of a plant full of broken machines. It had been a meteor freak alright, several, in fact. A whole litter. Literally. And why not? If people were affected by the meteors, then why not cats? If birds ate from seeds and berries grown on meteor-infested earth, and cats ate those birds, then why wouldn't some of those cats become meteor freak felines—the kind that caused power surges? If he were a cat, wouldn't he have loved to hunt for birds at a fertilizer plant too?

"No fucking way in hell," he muttered aloud, checking his phone for messages. There were none. None at all. That was odd. Even if Chloe hadn't called, he usually received at least five messages or calls an hour, and now there were none.

_There is a logical explanation for this phenomenon…_he thought as he toed off his shoes, entered his bathroom, undressed and removed the band aid from his brow. _I know there is a logical explanation. Something deceptively simple. Something stupid. _He shivered. It probably hadn't been a very good idea to go chasing electrically charged cats through an industrial unit with water pouring form the ceiling and flames starting on all sides with a head injury, no matter how minor—but damn, it had been fun. His head was pounding like a base drum, but that was nothing a couple of paracetamols and a glass of whiskey couldn't cure. Besides, he could take it easy, tonight. Maybe he should call Chloe again. It wasn't like her to leave someone hanging like that. If anything, she'd bee too curious to see what he wanted to refrain from calling him. Perhaps she'd lost her phone.

When he ducked out of the shower and studied his reflection, he noticed with contentment that the swelling had, by now, mostly gone down. Apparently those sprinklers were useful for more than quelling fires: the constant cold had helped shrink the bump. All he had now was a slightly raised purple bruise the size of a dollar on a flattering background of greenish yellow, with in the middle still the ragged horse head, now nicely scabbed over. In short, he still looked like hell, but at least he looked more or less human again.

"Thank god for ivory foundation and band aids," Lex muttered. He swallowed two white pills with a few mouthfuls of water, put on dry clothes and went down to his den for his glass of much-needed whiskey.

He had just curled up on the sofa with his cell—there was a very good reason why she hadn't called him back, but hell if he could remember what it was—when James, after a modest knock, entered the room with a bowl of freshly shaved ice and subtly informed him that Miss Deb had returned from school and was now outside in the back yard beating carpets with her mother.

_They call me 'sir', _Lex thought with a mixture of admiration and irritation, _but I do as much what they want me to do as the other way around. It's a fricking household staff conspiracy._ He put down his phone with a small sigh. Better thank the kid now than postpone it and forget about it altogether. She did deserve some sign of gratitude. He wished he had something to give her, but maybe her mother was right, maybe that would insult her. Smallville people were strangely sensitive when it came to accepting presents.

"Duly noted, James." He took a final sip and shook his head when his butler plunged a spoon into the ice. "Put it back in the freezer. It will melt and pollute my whiskey if you'd put some in now."

"Yes sir."

"You could have saved yourself the trouble of shaving it, you know," Lex said, walking to the door. "You could just have told me Deb was back. You didn't need an excuse."

"Excuse, sir?" James asked, cool as a stuffed royal penguin.

Lex huffed out a laugh and raised his hands in defeat. "Never mind. I'll be in the back yard if anyone calls."

"Yes sir," James said serenely, and closed the lid of the ice bowl without making a sound.

Nelson Fetter, to Chloe's vexation, created the loveliest, most beautiful and inspired art she'd seen in a long time. His nudes were stylish, artsy and life-like; his landscapes soothing and somewhat dreamy; his still lives of flowers and cups and vases natural and interesting. He had painted several portraits and they were all spot-on with just a dash of parody that only served to make them more realistic. Besides the paintings he also exhibited a number of drawings he had done for a series of sketches by a befriended stand-up comedian and these, too, were a delight to view. Finally, there was an entire gallery with pictures he'd made as illustrations for a children's book about dancing guinea pigs.

Chloe spent one and a half hour at the gallery, listening to Fetter's rather adorable opening speech, admiring every piece and jotting down praises on her note pad. She couldn't bear to rush through the exposition; it wasn't often she actually thought the artist talented and it would not be fair to cheat him out of his well-deserved glory simply because she was in a hurry. So she commented on the enthusiastic response of the audience, interviewed both Nelson Fetter and his sponsor, and spoke briefly with a few people who weren't averse to having their names and opinions appear in the paper.

Then she selected ten pieces to describe in her upcoming review, bought the children's book with the guinea pigs and a few post cards ('Do you have these digitally, too? Yes? Great. Could you send these ten to ? Yes, for publishing purposes. Here's my card. Sullivan. Yes, from the Tuesday column. There's a fee for the digital files? No problem, put it all on this card. The book too, that's for reference. Yes, it's a great success. Well, good luck with the exposition and have a good day.') and left after lingering for another moment with the final illustration from the book, which showed fifteen guinea pigs doing a Can-Can in front of an audience of children. Even though Fetter was known for his nudes and portraits and the book was just a side project, it was the illustrations that made her put his card in her wallet for safekeeping. They were wonderful. She wanted to blow up this picture to A3 size and hang it over her bed. Well, if all went well she'd have it as a .jpeg file later this afternoon. If she asked nicely, one of the geeks in the basement would probably print it out for her on one of their autocat printers.

Sighing a little, she turned her back on the cute guinea pigs and walked out of the gallery. Outside, the first lanterns were already blinking on, still in that mysterious orange hue before they powered up to blazing white. A few flakes of snow drifted down from the sky, but it was nothing like a storm. _More like an angel brushing dandruff from his shoulder, _she thought lyrically as she stepped into her car. Already traffic was building up on the Metropolis roads; she was in the head of it, but she'd had to be fast to keep from being sucked in and get stuck.

_As long as I get out of Metropolis before five, I'm fine. Once I'm on the country road I can take it easy, the jams won't get past the third crossing._

_Right. Here we go._

She drove off towards Smallville.

"Hello, Deb."

The girl looked up from the stack of oriental carpets laid out on the ground, saw him standing behind her with his hands in his pockets and blushed crimson.

"Mister Luthor!"

_Call me Lex, _was what he wanted to say, but his experience dictated that he should keep a healthy distance between himself and this girl. He did give her a warm smile, though—as warm as he dared.

Her eyes went to his forehead. "Are you alright? Mom said you went to work this morning." Her own tone of voice informed him that she thought this the height of idiocy, and her mother thoughts so as well.

Lex shrugged easily. "I'm fine. My head's much better, and it wasn't a bad injury."

"You were bleeding a lot."

"Habit," said Lex. He shivered again, wishing he had brought a coat. The weather was quite nice today, but it was still cold and the icy wind made his head hurt.

"You bleed _habitually_?" Deb said incredulously. Then her eyes traveled to his chest, as if considering the scars she couldn't see now but had noticed when he'd stood in front of her half naked (which, Lex reminded himself, really had been a spectacularly bad move of his) and she nodded.

"Anyway," Lex continued, "I wanted to thank you for taking care of me. I was a bit short with you if I remember correctly. Especially the cookies were a nice touch."

She blushed again. "That's ok," she said shyly. "I didn't mind. You were hurt and you needed someone to give you tea, and with Mom sick and the others out I was the only one there. It was my honor," she concluded with a great big smile, and Lex grinned back, quite helpless against teenage charm.

"It was much appreciated," he assured her.

"That's good!" Her joy was slowly becoming embarrassment, and since Lex wanted to thank her and not humiliate her, he gave her a final nod and turned to go back inside. Charlie Falls burst out of the kitchen into the back yard, skidded to a halt in a patch of snow that hadn't been swept away and assumed the Scottish Guardsman position he always assumed when talking to his employer. He also did this on the telephone. Lex thought this was hilarious.

"Mister Luthor…"

"Yes?"

Charlie licked his lips. "It's Mister Luthor, Sir. Your father. He's just parking on the drive way."

Of course Lionel would have found out that Lex had had another car accident. Either the garage was linked to his personal computer, or otherwise one of his spies at the plant had sent him a message that his precious son had a somewhat canine appearance this morning. Just what he needed: Dad coming by to further tear down his self-esteem.

Lex moaned, then only just managed to keep from slapping his hands against his mouth. _What is WRONG with me? Am I turning normal again? _It didn't matter that every single one of his staff KNEW he hated seeing his father, it was just NOT DONE to let himself go like this. Especially not in front of Deb, who was regarding him with far too much understanding.

"Do you want to hide?" she asked. "I have a hidden tree hut in the back of the garden."

_Thank god for doting teenagers. Did I ever say I wanted them to leave me alone? I take those words back! I need more doting teenagers!_ Nevertheless he shook his head."I'd better face my demons," he said jokingly.

"Your father is a demon?" She was smiling, but her eyes were serious.

"Oh yes." Lucifer, fallen angel, deposed general, seductive monster, devourer of souls.

"Are you sure?" Deb asked. "About hiding. My tree hut's pretty well concealed. It's right behind that odd-shaped rhododendron bush. That big oak."

"I know," Lex said. He'd actually seen her build it with a friend of hers, giggling and running to and fro with nails, hammers and timber, casting furtive glances around to make sure no one saw them. Of course everybody had seen them, Lex included. He'd let them. What did he care about tree huts? At least someone made use of the yard that way.

He now swallowed the wild impulse to give the girl a crushing hug and hide himself in her tree hut. It would be fun to see Lionel search him all over the premises, but it would be less fun to be found in a child's tree house. No, it was better to deal with Dad right now and hope he'd go away soon.

He rubbed his forehead, cursing himself for not applying large amounts of concealing foundation or another band aid.

"I could give you a band aid real quick," Deb said, "but they have pictures of Snoopy on them."

Lex guffawed. He imagined facing Lionel with a huge slab of a band aid on his forehead covered in Snoopies, imagined having one of their hateful, biting conversations together with Lionel being forced to address those Snoopies again and again, and had a laughing fit that lasted a full minute, and when he could finally stop again, he was feeling so much better he actually did give Deb a quick hug.

"Thanks," he told the astonished girl. "You've been a great help. Build as many tree huts in the garden as you like, you have my permission."

"O-ok. Thank you!"

Lex straightened up, wiped the grin from his face and faced the door. _Well, Dad, here we go again. Round and round the carrousel. _ He went inside and opened his laptop (which wasn't even on; he hadn't had the chance to turn it on yet) so he could close it when his father came in.

Their argument started the moment Lionel walked through the door and Lex shut his laptop.

"Hello, Dad."

"Oh for god's sake, Lex, couldn't you at least have kept your FACE intact?"

Lex leered. "Why thanks, Dad, it hurts a bit, but I'm fine, really."

"I can see that you're fine," Lionel spat. "If you weren't, you wouldn't be standing there being smart with me. But really, Lex…What the hell is wrong with you?"

"The roads were slippery."

"Don't give me that bull."

"They were. It was snowing. I miscalculated."

"You're doing that an awful lot, these days. You're spinning out of control, Lex."

"You can hardly blame me for being shot," Lex protested. "Nor for having inadequate snow tires. Neither of which, I may add, has hurt the company so far, so really Dad, what is your problem?"

"My problem," Lionel drawled, and invaded Lex's personal space, forcing Lex either to step out of it (a defeat of sorts, or at least a retreat) or keep his ground and operate with all his nerves on edge. Lex kept his ground. "My problem is that 'so far' phrase. Whether it's your attitude, your foolish trust in people you should keep clear of, or simply spectacularly bad luck I don't know, but it is a fact that things are not going well for you at the moment. And no, it hasn't hurt the company—yet, but if you keep going on like this, it will."

"You think I'm a liability?" Lex asked, baffled until he remembered (how could he forget, really) the small blonde problem at the Daily Planet. (Who still hadn't called him back. He'd checked) Dad might actually be right about this. Not that he would ever admit that: until every page in that file had been published and he saw his own picture in the newspapers proclaiming him the most terrible butcher since Stalin the small blonde problem would remain hidden in the shadow of the DP globe.

"Yes, Lex," Lionel said, almost gently. "I do."

"Well," said Lex, and now he did step away, if only to pour himself a drink, "that shows that your people insight is a bit off. Maybe you're becoming softer at your age?" That was weak. He faced his father with a perfect copy of the man's own hurtfully bland smile. "I have never been better. Really, you shouldn't worry, Dad. Sure, getting shot was no fun, and I've needed some time to readjust but believe me, you don't need to take over just yet." Lex wouldn't let him. Lionel got the message, and his mocking little smile turned all the more nasty.

"I am so relieved to hear it," Lionel sapped. Lex cringed and downed his whiskey, fighting the urge to spit and get rid of the slimy feeling talking to his father created in his mouth. How was it possible he'd thought this pathetic game of theirs was soothing, when he was in the hospital? "Everything's going well, then? Apart from that…unfortunate slide with your…ah…car?"

" Perfect."

"How about your love life?"

Lex had to take a second to control his facial muscles. "You mean you want to know whether you can sleep with any of my girlfriends, like you used to? Dad, you really have to be careful with the way you phrase that; one might get the idea you can't find any of your own."

He felt a hint of satisfaction as Lionel tumbled into that one eyes open. "_My_ women have not been in the habit to endanger my life, my career or my sanity."

"And yes, mine have. It's good of you to remind me of that, I'd almost forgotten_." I need another drink. Hell, I need a line of cocaine. I need fucking heroin! I need a shotgun to blow his goddamn brains out!_ He gave an amused chuckle, only just managing not to follow it up with unstoppable gagging. "Unfortunately, Dad, I am currently not in possession of an easily corruptible girlfriend. Sorry." _The only one I have available is going to throw my bleeding carcass in front of the crowds after she's done gnawing off all the meat. Nothing to your taste, Dad. So sorry._

"What about your little reporter friend?" Lionel asked right on cue. "The one you took to Paris?"

"You don't have a lot to do in the evenings, do you, Dad?" Lex smiled. "You really need a hobby. One day I'll be gone and then what are you going to do with your time?" He poured himself another drink. "I took her to Paris," he continued, "because she saved my life. Took her shopping, if you want to know—but I'm sure you have all the receipts, so I'm sure you're aware of it already. We had a great time."

"And?" Lionel prodded when Lex took his time savoring a sip.

Lex swallowed and shrugged. "And…that's it? Really, Dad, what do you want me to say? Did I fuck her? No, you probably don't want to know, although I'm sure you'd make recordings if I didn't sweep my apartment for bugs every day. Well, I did. She saved my life, I took her to Paris, and now all debts are repaid. It's over."

"And?"

"And what?"

Lionel chuckled in that superior way that made Lex want to take his Hakashi samurai sword, slit open his father's throat and pull that tongue out through his esophagus. "Lex, please. Give me some credit. I know you. That girl had you wound around her little finger so tightly you almost squeezed off the tip of her finger. She defended you. To me! and you defended her! Now please correct me, but if a woman is prepared to stand up to me to keep close to you, and I have not paid that woman to do so, there is more to that relation than simple gratitude."

"Friendship?" Lex suggested.

"Oh, Lex…" Lionel laughed. "You and me both know that you can't be _friends_ with women. They're your Achilles heel. Shoot a woman at you and you'll fall on your back so fast you make the dust rise."

"That's a very vivid and imaginative image, Dad," Lex said, bored. "Are you suggesting I should become gay?" _Just got some first-rate experience, after all._

"I'm sure you've experimented with it," Lionel said, equally unimpressed. "But no, that was not what I was suggesting. As a matter of fact, I was not suggesting anything. I was merely stating that I have a hard time accepting that one moment you act so protective of that Sullivan girl I keep expecting to find your _teeth_ in my leg, and claim that she was just a diversion the next. Like I said, I _know_ you, and I know the hold women have on you; as well I should, after those two disasters here in Smallville."

"Sure," Lex said, "blame it on Smallville."

"I don't blame it on Smallville," Lionel spat. "I blame it on you! I know you're a smart boy, Lex, but when it comes to women you're just another fool who thinks with his dick."

"You seem to cultivate a disturbing interest in my dick, lately," Lex said, arching his eyebrows. "Having trouble with your own? What is this, replacement issues? What the hell is your problem anyway? So I took a girl to Paris. I've done so before and I'll do it again." He leaned his hip against the grand piano, loosely crossed his arms over his chest and supported the elbow of the hand holding his glass with his other hand. "I know you disapprove of the way I handle my girlfriends. Suck it up, Dad, I'm an adult, and unlike you I actually enjoy having a relationship. But this one's over, so you can stop badgering me about it. And please stop talking about my dick, it makes me highly uncomfortable."

Lionel smiled sourly, momentarily at a loss for words. This round was for Lex. Lex smiled into his whiskey. He waited patiently for round two to begin.

One hour later they were both sitting in the corner of a couch, nursing their drinks and searching for new and exciting ways to insult one another. They were like a couple of boxers, preparing for round three. Lex felt energized and exhausted at the same time; he'd received a couple of mean blows but he'd dealt out a few good ones as well, and if there was a tang of blood in his mouth, he was happy knowing that Lionel was swallowing blood as well.

They smiled at each other, motionlessly circling one another like fighting lions.

"What are you going to do with the plant?" Lionel asked, starting off round three—or maybe entering break time. Lex wasn't sure yet.

"Let it run half-power until the machines are fixed."

"You're sure you've resolved the problem that made them defunct in the first place?"

"Yes." It was a break. Good. Maybe he could lead break time into leaving time. "Meteor freak cats."

"You don't say."

"I do."

"Did you catch them or kill them?"

"Caught four. I'm afraid the fifth one was crushed by one of the machines it blew up."

"Sent them to the lab?"

"Of course."

"Well done, Lex."

"Mm." Silence. Lex sipped his whiskey. He was slowly but certainly beginning to get drunk, if only because he was also beginning to get ravenously hungry and the only thing he was consuming was alcohol.

"Good old Smallville," Lionel murmured. He looked up and grinned, that wide flash of charming white that had fooled so many people. "Did you receive that old cow Harriet Miltington's invitation for her Mid-Summer Tea Party yet?"

"I did," Lex said. "She sure likes to make sure people know well in advance."

"Smallville nouveau riche," Lionel said scathingly. "The pretentiousness."

Lex shrugged. "We're nouveau riche too, Dad, and if it comes to pretentiousness we could teach the Miltingtons a thing or two." Lex liked being pretentious. It made him feel delightfully cheap in a very wealthy way.

"Ah, but Luthors aren't pretentious. We are _refined_. And Luthors sure as hell don't give Mid-Summer Tea Parties." He scoffed. Lionel, Lex gathered, was pretty close to rip-roaring drunk as well, or he was affecting it very convincingly.

"Aaah well…" Lex drawled. "You know what it's like. You get an invitation for a tea party and you go there fully expecting Earl Gray and muffins, and you end up

teabagging the hostess' daughter behind the garden shed."

Lionel frowned. "Teabagging?"

"_Dip_-ping," Lex pronounced slowly, relishing the plosives.

Lionel looked disgusted. Sexual innuendo, when presented crudely enough, never failed to put him off. Sensing an opening, Lex rushed in to make use of it.

"Well, it's been nice talking to you, Dad, but I have a lot to do, so…"

"Surely you're not going to send me out before inviting me to dinner?" Lionel drawled.

Watch and learn! Lex thought rebelliously, but he swallowed his annoyance. Kicking his father out now would be a capitulation of a sort, and he'd die before giving up. "Of course not," he gritted out pleasantly. "I wouldn't dream of it. I just thought you might have, you know, better things to do than force yourself to polite conversation with your son."

"Lex," Lionel smiled, "I always love to come by and chat with you. What could be more important?"

Lex rang for James. The butler sailed in within 30 seconds. "We have a guest for dinner," Lex said with a casual gesture at his father.

James nodded. "Very well, Sir. I'll inform Mrs. Jennings." He zoomed out again.

Lionel followed him over the edge of his whiskey glass, an appraising look in his eyes. "That," he said, "is an exceptionally impressive manservant you've got there, Lex. I don't often admire butlers, but really, this is a real gem you've picked up."

"Yeah," Lex said. "He's exceptional indeed. You can't have him," he added as an afterthought, and Lionel's eyebrows danced.

Exactly how exceptional he found out ten minutes later, when James returned to say that dinner was ready and where would sir like to have it? Not once did he glance at Lionel and this cheered Lex up considerably.

He could have a sophisticated shouting match with his dad over dinner in the Dining room, either of them sitting at the end of a fifteen-foot long table. Or he could try to make the best of it here. Eating at the grand table might please his father. Lex subsequently decided to have dinner here, in the den. He tried to remember what he'd ordered for dinner, wondering if it contained something Lionel was allergic to. Not much luck there; Lionel was as much of a cockroach as Lex: shoot him, clobber him, poison him, everything short of nuke him and he crawled right back out to his feet again. Indestructibility ran in the family.

Well, there was always the chance that he simply didn't like the food.

"Let's eat," Lex said with a challenge.

Lionel showed his teeth. "Let's," he replied ominously.

When Chloe arrived at the entrance to the Luthor Mansion at a quarter past eight, she uttered a shriek of alarm and steered into the grass next to the road as Lionel Luthor, face visible behind the wheel of a fat Mercedes, came speeding out of it before the gates had even fully opened. He raced past her without taking his foot off the gas; even the roar of his engine sounded expensive and arrogant.

_Lionel. Oh right, that DOES explain._ A significant part of the anger that had built up during her long and dreary drive to Smallville disappeared, because really, if there was one good reason for not replying to her messages it was Lionel. That did not mean she had forgiven Lex. She hadn't. There were still beans to spill and truth to be told—not to mention mad love to be made and apologies to be accepted.

She hesitated only for a second, and that second was for show only.

The moment the gates started to close, Chloe reversed, got back onto the road and drove through onto the Luthor driveway. She made it just in time. The Mansion loomed up in the dark like the castle from Beauty and the Beast, and for a moment she wished she'd brought roses.

_Here, Lex. To keep under a glass bulb._ He probably wouldn't get it. It didn't matter. She didn't have roses, only her paper baby, which she clenched tightly in her right hand after she'd parked and got out of her car.

"Here we go," she said aloud, and started towards the door.

TBC


	32. Chapter 32

pant, pant Made it

**pant, pant Made it! **

**As always, thank you for your reviews! Keep 'm coming and I keep writing. Well, I'll finish this anyway, but hey, I can whore if I want to, right ******** About two more chapters to go…but this first.**

**Thirty-two: In which Chloe takes off masks**

When his father was gone, Lex sank back in the pillows of his love-seat and allowed his mind to go blank for a minute. Two and a half hours of Lionel. Two and a half hours of nasty banter and mutual veiled and not so veiled insults. A battle without swords, without real victims, but nevertheless ending with at least one side mentally crushed.

_God, how did I survive a childhood with twenty-four seven of Dad?_

Of course, Lionel had been gone most of the day, working, and his mother had never felt the need to tell him he was a disappointment the size of Africa. Neither, he had to admit, had Lionel, when Lex was young. Not always. There had been periods of peace and even love—it was just getting harder and harder remembering that there had ever been.

_But the saddest thing of all, _Lex thought as he tiredly rubbed his forehead, _is that this is our only way of communication. And what is so unbelievably fucked up it is beyond sad is that I still need it. Even though it drains me, and probably hurts him as well, we can't help being the way we are, and we still need this, this two-person war, like drugs. We are addicted to wounding one another. The perfect sado-masochistic relationship. Because it isn't just me. He keeps coming back for more, too. We spent too long hating each other to go back to a relationship approaching anything normal or even healthy, even when he finally believed that I hadn't killed Julian._

He sighed. _I am so tired. I slept ten hours this night and now I'm exhausted again. Christ. Who needs enemies with lovers, friends and family like mine?_

A soft cough alerted him to the presence of his butler and he dropped his hands in his lap.

"Yes, James, what is it? Don't tell me he's come back because he's forgotten something, because I swear, I'll blend it in front of his eyes."

"No, sir," James said impassively (although he could not have a clue what Lex was talking about; he'd never used explosive therapy in Smallville.). "You have another visitor."

Lex just stared up at him, lying bonelessly in his chair.

"Miss Sullivan, sir."

"CHLOE?" He jerked up straight, weariness forgotten, or rather drowned in a flood of emotions. _Chloe? What's she doing here? Why didn't she just call? Do I want to see her? Yes. I want her, period. But what does she want? Make up? Accuse? Fight? Cry? God, I hope she won't start crying. Will she let me explain? Do I even WANT to explain? Traitorous bitch…_

He allowed his raving thoughts a few seconds to rampage through his head, then cut them off with knife-like abruptness.

"Sir? Can I show her in?"

Lex stared at his hands in his lap, breathing two slow, calming breaths, then looked up and nodded. His emotions were safely tucked away, leaving him cool and distant. "Yes," he said pleasantly. "Show her in. Oh, and James? I do not want to be disturbed while she is here."

"Yes sir." James left.

Lex got up from his chair, rolled his shoulders and then positioned himself against his desk. If she had taken the trouble to come all the way to Smallville, he would do her the courtesy of open warfare. No laptop. No phone. No distractions. Just him, and her.

There was a knock. Lex bade the person Enter.

Chloe's plan had been to waltz in, hand him her article and say, "I'd like you to read this," sounding aloof and professional.

She knocked, waltzed in when he said 'Enter', but instead of her carefully practiced sentence blurted out "What happened to your face!" when she entered the den. He had this MASSIVE bruise on his forehead, already fading to purple but showing every evidence that it must have been a beauty.

Lex gave her that cool, minimal smile that was barely more than the relaxing of his mouth. "I parked carelessly," he said, leaning against his desk, hands in his pockets. "So, how can I help you, Chloe?"

His face was calm and friendly, his tone polite, but she nevertheless winced at the distance he created, purely with the stance of his body.

There might be yearning behind that mask. Or something helpless behind his eyes. If there was, she couldn't see it, and that frightened her, just a little. She was convinced he could see past her poise as easily as if her skin was translucent. But Chloe hadn't become a star reporter because she did not pay attention to the smallest things that happened to enter her vision, and Lex might be an expert at schooling his features, but she had one big advantage over other people. She knew him. Well. And while his expression and body language radiated languid ease, almost boredom, she knew better.

He wasn't in his business uniform; no shirt but one of those thin soft clinging gray sweaters that made him look so goddamned sexy—no tie. Ties and collars hid the neck and part of the throat, while this sweater left it bare. She stared at the point between his clavicles, focused on it, really, and finally found not the crack, but the tiny holes in his mask where the strings came out. While his face was pale and cool as always, his pulse was _hammering_ in that one vulnerable point.

She held out her article. "I'd like you to read this. Now," she added, when he opened his mouth—probably to tell her she could have mailed it to him, and sat down on the couch to illustrate her resolve. She could be mistaken, but for a moment she thought the corners of his mouth quirked up, but then the almost-smile was gone again. He took the stack of papers from her hand.

"Very well. Would you like something to drink?"

Not yet. "Just read it, Lex."

He inclined his head and sat down on the couch opposite of her; in the far left corner, so that while they were facing one another there was still a maximum of distance. He opened her article and began to read—not skimming it, as he might have done, but poring over it, taking it serious.

_He damn well should!_ Chloe thought rebelliously. That paper could ruin him, and he damn well knew it.

Lex sat back a little, crossed his legs, engrossed in the article. Sometimes, his lips moved as he read something to himself, not quite aloud, but focusing on it nevertheless. Once or twice she thought she saw him smile—at errors, she guessed. Lex had always reacted with amusement to grammatical errors. Or maybe she'd written something that was simply so wrong he thought her interpretation, and therefore Edge's, was funny. At some parts he scowled, or pressed his lips together, and once she was certain he actually cursed under his breath. At one point he absentmindedly patted his breast as if searching for a pen in his breast pocket—to make notes in the margin, she guessed. Finding no pen, he smirked, then finished his page and turned to the next one, absorbed in the material again.

It took him about a quarter of an hour before he lowered the booklet on his lap and faced her. "This is very good."

She studied voice, words and expression for mockery, but he wasn't making fun of her. "Yes," she said. "I know."

"I called you, yesterday. You didn't pick up."

She blinked. "N-no. I was out and forgot to bring my phone. But I called you back later that evening and you didn't answer, and again this morning, a few times, so…"

Lex exhaled forcefully through his nose, let his head roll back on his neck. "Ooh. God, I'm an idiot. You don't have my other number. And if you did have it, you didn't know."

"Excuse me?" Chloe asked, bewildered. She wanted to come back to her article but he'd ripped the conversation from her throat and now she didn't know how to get it back.

"My cell. It's still in my car. And my car's at the garage."

"Your…car?"

Lex shook his head and rubbed his forehead. He winced as he touched the bruise just above his nose. "Like I said, I drove carelessly."

"You CRASHED? AGAIN?" Good god, the man was a danger to himself and any vehicle ever created by humankind.

"I didn't crash," Lex said petulantly. "I just slipped in the snow. It was no big deal."

"You…"

"We were discussing your article."

Chloe realized that she far preferred having the topic taken away from her than to have it handed back to her. She nodded slowly and unwillingly.

"It really is very good. Well-structured, thorough, convincing. If you really can produce the evidence you claim you have in here," Lex said with a short tap on the papers on his thighs, "you're right. You can put me behind bars. Me, my father, several other people." He still sounded abnormally calm.

_Does nothing touch him? Is he really not worried at all? Or is it simply that he doesn't care?_ She looked at that point between his collar bones. It was once again smooth; if he was upset his heart rate wasn't showing it. Her confidence faltered. When she first saw him, she'd been so convinced everything would be alright, but now she didn't know what to think anymore. It was almost as if they'd never had a relationship at all.

"Yes," she repeated faintly. "I know."

"Of course half of it is plain nonsense."

"Excuse me?"

"Or let me rephrase it: the interpretation is wrong. I never," and suddenly his voice grated with anger, "intentionally tortured people. And I must say that having you claim that I did…disappoints me."

"That sound file I mentioned…"

"You could have asked ME!" Lex shouted, and slammed the bunch of papers on the table. His face had drained of color apart from the bruise on his forehead, his mouth and his eyes and his freckles, and those freckles weren't cute at all at the moment.

Chloe winced inwardly—Lex this angry was pretty scary—but did not lose her cool. "You didn't exactly come forward, did you? _When_ I asked."

He stabbed a finger into the article. "And after reading all that precious documentary that drove you to write such an _excellent_ story you're surprised? Why the hell did you think I never told anybody?"

"Because you don't want to take responsibility," Chloe said calmly. "Like with the Cradle Cancer."

"I already AM responsible," Lex hissed back. "Not for Cradle Cancer. The reason I hushed that up is that no one would take me seriously if I started up a project to cure that disease if I'd admitted LuthorCorp caused it in the first place—I'd get tagged disingenuous and people would not cooperate. I KNOW how it works, remember, I've lived in Smallville."

"You still could have admitted LuthorCorp was guilty. The distribution of the poisonous grain happened before your time. No one would be able to blame you."

"Of course they'd blame me!" Lex snarled. "I AM LuthorCorp! Whoever is at the head of a company is to blame for whatever that company does or has done."

Chloe opened her mouth to protest, but then she remembered Valerie's opinion about Lex Luthor being a name more than a person, and realized that both she and Lex were probably right on this account.

"It still was a horribly selfish and cowardly thing to do," she said stubbornly. "And it's wrong to take the credit of healing those children if you were responsible for making them sick in the first place."

"I never said it wasn't," Lex retorted. A bit of color seeped back into his skin. "And I can assure you that with every bit of praise I get, there is a satisfying amount of guilt to match it—but I could hardly tell the raving masses that it wasn't me that cured their kids but Clark Kent, could I now?"

"That isn't the point."

"No? Do enlighten me. What have I ever done to you that justifies you going behind my back to conspire with a man who almost killed me and try your damnedest to bring me down? And why are you here now? Why let me read my own death sentence? Is that part of your game?"

"This isn't a game!" Chloe cried out, losing her poise. "How could you think this is a game? It isn't! And the reason I came here and let you read my baby is to let you know what I found, and how it came across. I'm here to tell you that I'm not going to publish it."

Lex's eyebrows rose so high she thought they might disappear from his head entirely. "Oooooh?" he drawled.

Chloe wanted to hit him, but she forced herself to remember that he was wearing a mask, and that behind it, he was just as anxious as her. It was pretty hard, though. All she picked up from him was a dangerous, unstable resentment—not at all the demure apology she'd had in mind.

Then again, she reasoned, she should have foreseen this. This was Lex Luthor, after all, and Lex Luthor, she'd read in the papers, did not apologize. It had probably gone against his nature to call her in the first place, and he had anyway. And, of course, there was that little fact that she HAD betrayed him.

She cleared her throat, poise more or less restored. "No. I am not going to publish it."

"And what changed your mind?"

"Well, it wasn't your heartfelt apology, that's for sure!" she snapped, fed up with that icy sarcasm. "You know, for someone who's so upset about your failing relationship, you do fucking little to try and repair it."

"I called you."

"Yes, so you did. Yesterday! After four days! Do you know how close I was to sending this to Perry and kicking your ass into jail?"

"Close, I take it," Lex sneered. "So I ask again: what changed your mind." He stood up, as if he couldn't bear to keep seated, and began to drift through the room, to his desk, to the liquor cabinet, back to his desk. All the while she was speaking he was in motion, his movements so smooth and measured she hardly noticed it at first. Only when she had to turn her head for the third time she realized he was never still, even though he appeared to be stationary, perfectly at ease. Lex never fidgeted. He displayed no tics, nor outward signs of stress but he did move around when he was uncomfortable. She'd seen it when he had the flu, and now, with Valerie's psychiatric assessment still clear in her mind, it registered again.

_Take off your mask for me, Lex. Take it off._

"What changed it?" she asked. "Me. I did. I changed my own mind. Because I realized something, right after I listened to those adorable messages you left me." She sniggered despite herself. That last message was actually too funny for words. She ought to save it to disk and put a beat under it. "Do you know why?"

Lex gave no reply. Maybe he couldn't think of any reasons.

"Because I hated you for lying to me, while I should have hated you for covering up LuthorCorp crimes. And I don't. I still don't. I'm still much more upset with you about lying to me than about what Edge wants me to be upset about, so I figured I might as well put that aside and confront you with what really matters. To me."

"And what is it that really matters to you?" Lex asked softly.

"Trust."

"Trust."

"Yes. Trust. You never trusted me. I thought that you did and I think you thought that you did, too, but you never trusted me enough to tell me the truth, not even when I asked for it."

"You wouldn't…!" Lex began hotly, but she shook her head and he halted.

"Lex, I'd never have asked to hear the truth if I didn't think I couldn't handle it. I mean, I know who you are! I've known you for ages, I know what you're capable of—and I don't mean that in a strictly negative way. Hell, funding illicit ventures is part of what makes you you, so…What I mean to say," she continued, discontinuing her rambling, "after everything I've seen you do, nothing could actually scare me away from you. And if you didn't see that, if you don't understand that…that you lying to me actually hurts me more than any criminal activity you'd pursue…"

"You consorted with Edge because I wouldn't tell you the truth, or at least, what you perceived to be the truth," Lex said bleakly. He put his glass down. "You had the vague notion that I might be lying and therefore you decided it was ok to go behind my back." He sighed and rubbed at his forehead. "No," he said, addressing the carpet, "I didn't trust you. Everyone I've ever trusted either betrayed me or died on me because of the trust I placed in them. So pardon me for not wanting to include you in that select company."

"Include me now," Chloe said.

He looked up. "Pardon me?"

"Trust me." She gestured at the file on the table. "You've tried not trusting me and I betrayed you anyway. So try it the other way. Trust me. Explain it to me. I know one side of the story, tell me yours. I'm not leaving, Lex. I already know everything, so…" she stopped as he chuckled. "What?"

"Oh, Chloe…You don't know anything." He exhaled, leaned the back of his thighs against his desk, legs crossed at the ankles. His hands sought purchase on the desk top. A strange, somehow helpless smile twisted his mouth. "You want the truth? You want me to trust you? Is that what you really want?"

"Yes," Chloe whispered. "I want to understand you. And I want to show you that you can trust me, too. No matter what you've done. I want you to be honest with me…even if I haven't been honest with you."

The last few words sent a little jolt through his body; he hadn't expected her to admit she had messed up, too. Her confession softened him, if only a little; his entire body slumped an inch. For a long time, more than a minute, he stood there, lips pursed, watching her with eyes turned inward. Finally he nodded.

"Alright," he said slowly. "Alright. I'll tell you the truth, anything you want to hear. Just ask, and I'll answer. Truthfully."

Chloe swallowed, nervous all of a sudden. "Really?" This was what she'd wanted, right? Then why was she feeling this looming doom?

"I never go back on my word."

She nodded, licked her lips. A tiny smirk pulled at the corners of Lex's mouth. He walked back to his liquor cabinet, briskly this time, not drifting, and poured her a glass of cherry brandy. She accepted it with a mirroring smirk of her own, took a lingering sip and enjoyed the hot sweet taste of it as it went down.

"Hit me," said Lex, and Chloe felt as if she was going to.

"Ok."

"How many people were killed because of those level 3 or 33 projects?"

Lex pursed his lips, pressed them together, then looked up and said, "Seventeen."

"Seven…teen…" Edge's file had said ten. She had thought that was a lot.

"That's why I closed them down," Lex continued, still soft, but no longer imploring. His voice had become almost toneless. "Because of those accidents."

"Accidents?" Chloe asked shrilly. "You call seventeen people dead an 'accident'?!"

"Not an accident. Accidents. Plural. I had five. Five level threes. Well, one level 33, but that was a bit of a pun, really…" He trailed off, looked back at her, and suddenly Chloe felt as if she were back in his car with her mouth smeared with ink, and he was wordlessly asking her if he could tell her what the blood on his sleeve meant, and what it had been like playing Robinson Crusoe for three months.

"Tell me," she said, because that was what he wanted to hear. And just like in that car, she didn't want to hear it, not really, because these things had been locked up in Lex Luthor's brilliant mind, too terrible to be shared, stewing in the darkness that was, at times, able to take over the man she knew was at heart a good guy.

But he didn't need sympathy, not at this point, and she wasn't sure she was ready to give it. "Tell me, then. Tell me about those accidents. Tell me now, and explain it me."

He opened his mouth, and despite his promise no words came out. He tried again, and produced nothing but silence. Then he frowned, picked up the glass on his desk and drained it. "The first," he started, monotonous and halting, "the first accident…the one that must have alerted Edge…It was in New York. It was top-secret, but as a matter of fact it was not illegal. Well, it was, but I had permission from up high." He smiled, poured himself another drink. "Pretty high up, indeed," he muttered. "Clandestine rather than unlawful." Chloe kept silent, waiting. Lex took another sip, then plunged ahead, speaking faster even if his voice remained flat.

"We were researching a spore produced by a specific kind of mushroom, to see if it could be used for biological warfare. Biological warfare," he said with a hint of sarcasm, "is always certain to be profitable." He emptied his glass and refilled it. "In November 2003," he went on, "zoologists had discovered a tribe of small primates in the mountain forests of China that, apparently under the influence of these spores, became so disproportionately aggressive that they had slaughtered every other creature in a 20 mile radius. I'm talking about monkeys this big," he added, holding his hands about ten inches apart, "not chimpanzees or baboons or that kind of apes; small creatures. Golden monkeys. They live on lichens. As close to herbivores as monkeys are likely to get."

Chloe nodded, still keeping quiet although 'China' made her skin tingle. Lex, however, as usual seemed to read her.

"Nowhere near my new factory," he said. "I'm not going anywhere near that place." He tossed back his third glass and poured another. "These cute little critters had ridden the forest of any other living creature within the perimeter of the mushrooms. Every. Single. Living. Animal. The moment they left that circle, they were back to normal. Killed two of the zoologists when they crossed the perimeter. The others found out it was the spores that made them violent, and shipped a load back to the states to see if people were also affected."

"Monkeys or mushrooms?"

"Hm? Oh, both."

"Why," Chloe wanted to know, "would anyone want to take those things out of the mountains of China and see if they could manipulate those spores so that they affected humans? Because that's what you're saying, right?"

Lex gave her a lopsided smile. "Like I already said: biological warfare. If silky-furred, usually peaceful monkeys can be turned into a bunch of blood-thirsty marauders, so can one's enemies. Or soldiers. Whatever works best. And it worked." He took a swallow. "Oh yes, it worked. Humans could be affected. And that's what happened in my New York Level 3. Someone was careless, or perhaps the machinery malfunctioned. I don't know. The manipulated spores escaped and infected two of the people working there, an intern and a specialist on genetics. They behaved according to the rules and activated lock-down. I went over there to see what was happening—there were cameras installed, of course."

"Of course," Chloe repeated.

Lex stared into his whiskey. "Only two people saw what went on there, and that was me and the man who lead the project. He resigned afterwards. It wasn't pretty. By the time it was deemed safe to go inside—after forty-eight hours of lockdown it was released—all we found back was just flesh. The animals—not just the golden monkeys but other primates as well, and rats, and…well, I don't remember. I couldn't tell anymore. The primates had bitten THROUGH the bars of their cages and slaughtered each other. That's the beauty of manipulated spores, you see. In nature, they only slaughtered OTHER animals. Here, they slaughtered EVERYTHING. The intern, a young woman named Mary Simmons had killed her colleague, who was male. With her bare hands. And teeth. We saw that on camera. At least I did. And then she ripped him apart and cannibalized him. I don't know what happened to her; I assume at one point the monkeys must have got to her. We found part of her back in one of the cages. Killed the golden monkey that was munching on her hand. It turned out to be the sole survivor."

He sloshed his drink around, studying the flow of the golden liquid in the glass. "That woman," he said slowly, "was the wife of the man who was Edge's accomplice."

"Was he the one that resigned?"

"No. That's Kirk Whitman. He…doesn't remember much about the accident."

_I bet he doesn't_, Chloe thought.

"Apart from Whitman and me, no one knows what transpired exactly in New York. Bernard Simmons, husband to Mary Simmons, worked at a higher level. As far as he knows, there was an explosion, and his wife was killed in the resulting fire."

"B.," Chloe murmured. "B. Bernard." She focused on Lex again. "You covered it up."

"Yes."

"And the other staff working on those spores?"

"Reassigned to other levels."

"But the people that went in to, you know…check for survivors? They must have seen everything?"

"Five people," Lex said, raising his fingers. "Whitman. Three people in my father's pocket—they don't talk. And me."

"You went in?" she asked incredulously. "After what you saw on camera?" Was he morbidly insane or just terribly, terribly brave?

Lex shrugged. "My project. My responsibility. The least I could do was see if someone could be…if something could be salvaged."

"But everyone was dead."

"Two people. Over 50 animals. Well, that one monkey was still alive but I shot it. Yes. I made sure that all computer hard drives, every note, everything…everything at all to do with those spores was destroyed. The good thing about controlled explosions is that they render everything unrecognizable. Simmons thought the death of his wife was because of…I don't know. He's lucky he doesn't know what really happened." He gulped down the rest of his whiskey.

Chloe watched him pour another one, his movements loose and easy, face tight as clay. She wondered what it must have been like to enter that place of death and madness. But it was too early to feel admiration, or pity, or even anger. She wasn't finished yet.

"What about," she said, "those homeless people Edge mentioned?"

"Ah," Lex breathed, and she realized that he was pretty close to being drunk even if he didn't show it. "the homeless. Isn't it funny that nobody gives a fuck about them when they die on the street, but if you pick them up and experiment on them, the world's too small all of a sudden? Not to relativize what happened to them, of course, but don't you think it's funny that Edge, who probably runs just as fast as anyone else when facing an innocent drunk at the bus stop, displays such righteous anger when he finds out they died on my level 3…"

"Lex. Quit stalling. Tell me."

"But of course. Level 3, LuthorCorp North-East Met department. My very first project—I didn't even have LexCorp yet. I was only 22, I think. Oh yes, good times." He took a swig, smiling bitterly. "I'd employed this man, this scientist. He used to be a guest teacher when I was finishing my Masters. He…"

"Wait," Chloe interrupted despite herself. "You have a Masters? You studied something? When? What?"

"Uh, when I was in Smallville?" Lex said. "And the two years before? I studied law for half a year, and then management science and physics. And biology, for a while. Didn't you know?"

Yes, she did know. She had known. Business science at least. But…he'd never studied. She couldn't recall him studying, like, ever. He was a businessman when he came to Smallville and he'd only been 21 at the time. She'd always thought that took up all his time: being a business shark. Apparently he'd casually completed two and a half studies at the same time. "You never went to lectures or tutorials?" she asked lamely.

Lex smiled a little. "Actually, I did. And I used recordings. Tutorials generally weren't all that useful to me. I work better on my own. I _am_ a genius, after all."

Again that odd mixture of pride and bitterness. _All he has is his wealth and his intelligence…God, yes._

Lex laughed softly. "Here you are thinking you know me and you don't even know I studied physics." He finished his glass and regarded her with glittering eyes. His smile now looked a little bit painful. "But we weren't discussing my education, we were discussing my screw-ups and personal obsessions. Homeless people. No, that professor. Shaw. Ezekiel Shaw. Specialized in bone science and cell growth. He came to me, saying he had found a way to regrow bone over a steel frame. Interesting, but not all, no, he'd also found a way to regrow FLESH. This man came to me with a hypothesis, perfect on paper, to regenerate missing limbs. On humans. It was…oh, I know it sounds futuristic and stupid if I put it like this, but I can assure you that it was…miraculous. Shaw was a bloody miracle worker.

'Anyway. He needed funding, and he needed volunteers. Couldn't work with animals, because it was human gene technology, and trying it out on lab rats wouldn't work at all. Experimentation on humans is considered not-done, especially when the research is at such a an early stage, so it had to be done tucked away. Still, we needed test objects—people with some limbs missing, or hideous disfigurements, or bone diseases that wouldn't mind putting their life on the line in the name of progress. So, where do you find volunteers?"

"Homeless people," Chloe whispered.

"Bingo," said Lex. "It really is amazing how many war veterans end up on the street. America is all big about the war and how they lend full support to those injured in action…Bullshit. Those people ending up jogging right alongside the president on their artificial limbs? Those are the lucky few. But we're not discussing politics here, either, we're discussing those poor homeless people that died because I experimented on them."

More whiskey. Chloe hoped he wouldn't fall over from alcohol poisoning. However, so far it only made him talk faster.

"First guy we found," Lex continued, "was sixty and had lived on the streets for ten years. He was a mess. He'd driven his tank onto a land mine in Afghanistan and lost both his legs and his left arm. If the other homeless hadn't taken pity on him and put him somewhere where he could get a couple of coins every day, and fed him, and paid for his boarding in the winter, he'd have died a long time ago. His name, if I recall correctly, was Willard. He wouldn't give his last name. We dragged him off the street—well, either Shaw or one of his men dragged him off the street, just an inch short of starvation. Shaw asked him if he wanted to participate in his regeneration project. Willard said yes if it included him having a roof over his head and three meals a day. He got both. Shaw got him back to a relatively good health. Then he started his program."

Lex shifted against his desk, hunching his shoulders a little. "What he did," he said, slowly again, "was surgically implant a specially treated steel frame and inject the surrounding bone with a cell growth-stimulating solution. By coating the frame with a calcium-engendering paste, he could make the steel 'rust' calcium, and at the same time direct the growth of the living bone like a bonsai tree. The flesh and muscle growth went over my head, but it worked on simulations and several other experts thought it plausible it would work."

"But it didn't work?" Chloe asked, enthralled.

"Oh yes, it did. Shaw started with Willard's arm. Within two weeks he'd grown back two inches of bone and half an inch of flesh. You should have seen it, Chloe," he whispered, and suddenly his voice was low and full of wonder, "This man, this wreck of a human being. We got him in not even caring that he lived, wishing only for comfort—not even happiness, just…comfort. The minimum of bearable. And we…Shaw…he gave him _hope_. For ten years, Willard hadn't been more than an animal—less, a slug; without self-worth, helpless, useless. But because of Shaw's invention he was getting a second chance at _humanity_ –being human, being _regarded_ as a human being!—and that…That was what I wanted to achieve." For a few seconds he remained silent, his face vulnerable and oddly beautiful in its total conviction of Doing Right. Then that sardonic sneer twisted his mouth and he continued, "Like I said, Shaw was a genius. Unfortunately, Willard died four weeks after he'd been admitted."

"Because of the treatment?"

"Because of a failed liver."

"Because of the treatment?"

"There was no reason to believe so," Lex said with a slurring hint of irritation. He poured himself another glass. Chloe hoped his own liver wouldn't give out anytime soon.

"So…you got yourself a new test object?" she prodded.

Lex nodded sharply. "I was busy with other things at the time. Like my half-brother reappearing like a jack-in-the-box, and various…other things. I left things to Shaw. And Shaw found himself four other volunteers. I assume he found them the same way as we found Willard. I don't know how Edge found out about this—perhaps he knew one of the homeless people, or perhaps he knew one of Shaw's hand-picked chosen. Anyway…" He took a small sip, "It was at that point that things began to go wrong. Terribly wrong. And by the time I found the time to check on Shaw's little project, there were two men dead, one dying in screaming agony and one saw—" His mouth trembled, and he took another swallow. "And one sawing off his own right arm with Shaw's surgical bone saw," he finished, again composed and toneless.

Chloe pressed her hands against her mouth. She recalled those screams, and Lex shouting to _put down the saw_…

"Shaw said it was a minor error in the fabrication of the calcium paste," Lex continued. "Apparently he'd added too much of some substance, or left out something of that. It caused unspeakable agony and massive nerve damage. Irreversible, unfortunately. But hey, who misses a few homeless people? Without our intervention, they'd probably have died on the streets; at least now they'd served some kind of purpose. Right?"

Chloe was too shocked for words. Especially when Lex said, "I gave Shaw one more chance. I believed in his theory," he clarified, at Chloe's horrified glance. "And I believed that, if he got it right, we'd be able to…to…to make a break-through, a real break-through in artificial limb technology. The deaths of these five men would have been for the betterment of the rest of the world; their suffering would make an end to the suffering of all those other amputees."

"But they were humans!" Chloe whispered. "He was torturing humans!"

"Humans who volunteered…"

"They didn't volunteer! They were lured in by the promise of decent treatment and shelter and food!"

"Because that was the only way we'd get them!" Lex spread his arms in a gesture both helpless and encompassing. "Don't you get it? These things will never work if you go through official channels! Those who don't really suffer, or who have a way to deal with their disability—money, or love, or care, or whatever—won't ever volunteer for these kinds of treatments because the chance they'll get better of it doesn't weigh up to the risk they run to losing more! It should have worked! Shaw's ideas should have worked! And if they had, then prosthetics and hooks would have been a thing of the past and all those mutilated war veterans could kick their wheelchairs into the swamp, and leprosy would have become a temporary inconvenience."

"But it didn't work."

"No. It didn't work. The last man's bones grew back, alright. Ten inch in one day. They grew right through his flesh, all over his body. I'll never forget that _scream_ of his. No matter how much morphine he pumped into him, Shaw never got him to stop screaming. Not until his ribs started growing inward and pierced his lungs. Shaw said it was a major step forward. I terminated the project when he said he wanted to start using coma patients, because they wouldn't…" He rubbed his temple and fell silent.

"Shaw wanted to experiment on coma patients?" Chloe whispered.

Lex nodded. He cradled his glass against his chest. "It was only at that point that I realized that Shaw didn't care at all about relieving human suffering," he said softly. "He really only cared about the results. Coma patients, he claimed, were the perfect guinea pigs. They can't feel pain, and if they can, they don't show it. They can't protest, run away or refuse, and to top it off, they're redundant. They're like vegetables, and who'd ever heard of an action group for the rights of vegetables?"

"Christ," Chloe breathed.

"Mmm."

"What…what did you do about him? About Shaw?"

"I told him our business was finished. He wasn't happy about it. He said he'd been making progress. I told him I didn't perceive what he was doing as progress, and he got angry and left." He pressed his lips tightly together, then looked at her, licked the scar on his upper lip and continued, "Later, I found out he…had started on his own. In another state. Ohio. He'd been sloppy getting rid of his failed experiments. He'd gotten known as the Ridgeback Ripper. Catchy name. I looked into it—that was two years ago."

"Did you catch him?"

"He's gone."

"But you did catch him?" She really didn't want a homicidal bone-freak on the loose, not in Ohio, not anywhere.

"He's GONE," Lex said, and again his mouth quivered. He tossed back his whiskey and scowled angrily. "It should have been a success! Not this horror—an advancement. I've started up so many projects, and so many have been successful! But this…if this had gotten out…" He raised his eyes to hers. "You are the first person I've ever shared this with. You're the first to know. I didn't tell my father, I never mentioned it to anyone, no one but you. I don't know what Edge has on this case but it can't be more than a shred, some tidbit of information. But…"

"This is two," Chloe interrupted him, before she could process what he was saying. "Level three number two. You said you had five. And you also mentioned seventeen deaths. This makes eight."

"God, Chloe, what are you? a punching bag!" Lex cried. "How many hits can you take? How can you possibly want to know more?"

_I don't. I really don't want to hear anymore. But…God, imagine keeping all that inside, never being able to talk about it…it's like Clark's secret but then five thousand times as bad…And him as old as I am now! _She knew she probably should hate him and despise him, but oddly enough she didn't. Because as he continued, she could see that it was tearing him to pieces, and through the pieces she could see how bad the scar tissue behind it was.

Martin Edge had wanted to use her feelings for Lex to destroy him? He'd succeeded in doing the opposite. No one had ever seen this deep into the abyss that was Lex Luthor's character, and damn the analogy but it WAS a bit like deep sea diving. It was dark and scary and cold and there were strange, horrible creatures and hidden reefs that might cut her to the bone…But if she looked up she could still see the lighter waters, the pretty fish and the sunshine playing over the waves, and somewhere, down in those impenetrable depths, now penetrated, was something that if she just went deep enough, if she was just brave enough to face that, might show her the very soul of what she was looking for.

So… "Tell me," she said. "Everything."

Lex let his head fall back on his shoulders, taking a deep breath as if he, too, was hoarding oxygen for another dive. When he faced her again his mask was completely gone.

"Ok," he said. He pulled away from the desk and sat down next to her. "Everything."

Once he began to talk, it was as if he couldn't stop. He had never considered keeping these projects of his to himself a secret—there was so much he was doing, so much he COULD talk about that keeping this silent had never been hard. Apart from that, most of the things Chloe kept dragging out of him were things he'd rather not remember, let alone talk about. But once he'd started, it all came pouring out and he wasn't sure whether it was a relief or a burden.

For more than an hour he described every detail of every plan he'd ever executed, every horror he'd encountered in the name of science, every dream he'd fulfilled and every nightmare he'd seen come true. He told her about the deaths he had caused and about the lives he'd saved, about his ideals, his shortcomings, his successes, his lethal failures.

He forgot to refill his glass even though his throat got dry and his voice gained a strange, husky edge. Sometimes he didn't know how to continue, and sometimes he didn't want to. When that happened, Chloe would let him try to find the words on his own, and if he couldn't find them she'd just say, "Tell me, Lex," and then he'd know how to put his thoughts into words and voiced them.

He told her about weapons he'd invented that could kill five thousand people without harming either the environment or damage computer systems, as was the case with neutron bombs. He described a suit LuthorCorp was designing that would protect a man's life against almost any weapon ever created by man.

He informed her of a force field he'd been working on that was originally intended for fighter planes but that might become a single-person field instead—as soon as he could find out why it ate flesh away like acid. He told her about the cheap medicines his company had developed and about the disease that went with its distribution to make sure there would be a continuous need for those medicines.

He listed all the projects he'd started to save the ozone layer, the sea, humans and animals, and then he listed all the plans that created machines or substances that would undo the effects created through the first projects.

He talked and talked until there was nothing left of his secrets, and then he fell silent and squeezed the bridge of his nose.

Lex had stopped talking. As a matter of fact he had stopped talking a few minutes ago, but Chloe's brain had been busy processing his flood of words and kept on rattling like a slow computer for some time after he had finished. She was feeling rather numb—no longer horrified or shocked, just numbed by the immensity of the part of Lex's world she didn't know. Mapping those 'Here be Dragons' territories would take some time, and considerable courage as well, but she wanted to know the pathways in his mind, and therefore she was confident she would succeed. Once she'd finished sorting out her feelings, not about Lex, but about what he was doing. "And the last one?" she asked, hoping she hadn't missed one but quite convinced she hadn't. "Your last level 3?"

"It's still running," Lex said tiredly.

"Still running? What kind of things are you doing there, then?"

"Cloning."

"Cloning?" Images of pod people and white-eyed zombies popped up in her head. "As in people cloning?"

"No," Lex said, a hint of amusement in his voice. "Not people, not yet. That's the plan, of course; develop a way to ensure everyone of transplant material created of cloned cells. But no, not yet. Cattle. Sheep, mainly, and cows. Plants as well, but since that's made legal a couple of years ago I transferred that project to an official branch."

"But...I thought animals had been cloned years ago. It isn't illegal, and it's been done before, so why..."

"Not the way I do it," Lex said. He was no longer slurring. "With the method I...my scientists and me have created, it is possible to speed up the growing process and generate a fully functional, perfect clone within two months when it comes to pigs, and three months for cows.

The old method..." he smiled faintly, "Dolly, Herman, sheep and bulls cloned years ago, all they did was clone cells. They still needed to grow to maturity naturally. With my technology you could breed an entire herd in three months."

It sounded...interesting. Chloe never really got why you couldn't just wait for a cow to grow up, but she guessed there must be huge benefits.

Again, Lex smiled. "It isn't about breeding cattle quickly. It's all about finding a certain gene in a cow—for instance a gene that makes it bigger, or more resilient to diseases, or able to live off a specific kind of grass. World hunger can only be solved by creating species of plants and animals that thrive on the barest minimum that's available and still create a source of food that's worth more than the amount of feed it takes to raise it. It used to take years and years to breed such specific traits into an animal because you had to wait until the animal with the correct characteristics had reached calving age and could reproduce the next generation so that you could make sure that that one essential genome had transferred to the characteristics of that species. Now that period has been shortened to only three months. We've already managed to breed a cow that can live on nothing but cactoids with a supplement of dried corn husks. It's being tested in Mexico. Apparently it's doing fine. It's still giving milk, too. Only half a bucket a day but we're working on that."

"But...Isn't that a good thing?" Chloe asked, bewildered. After all the horror stories she was rather confused about this final level three. "I mean, that would solve important issues, right? So why is it a level three project?"

"Because," Lex said patiently, "It's illegal. It's amazing how quickly it will be legalized when I can indisputably prove that I really have created an animal-friendly, profitable and balanced way to clone and speed-grow animals, but until then, it's illegal. Obtaining a permit from the government is a time-consuming and exhausting process—We'll get one, but the proceedings have by no means finished while my project's been on the way for a good two and a half years now. If you were to bring out any legally acceptable proof that I am manipulating animals for the purpose of cloning them and breeding genetically altered species, I'll go to jail. Or at least lose large sums of money. It would severely damage my company, in any case." He put it calmly, without any noticeable anxiety, but he did study her with a weary kind of curiosity.

"It doesn't seem much of a crime, doing something for which you'll get a permit anyway in time, and which the government will accept when it turns out to be profitable," Chloe figured.

Again that slightly patronizing half-smile. "Oh, I totally agree. The problem is that it is illegal. Just like driving at 100 miles an hour on a perfectly clear city lane at two o'clock at night. I do it anyway, but if I get caught I must suffer the consequences."

"You rarely get caught," Chloe understood.

"Very rarely," He agreed. "Not even by you. I got caught by Edge, and he never actually managed to lay a hand on me—well, a legal hand, anyway. He's just using you."

"No," said Chloe quietly. "He isn't using me. I won't let him. I told you before and I'll tell you again, I'm not going to report this."

"Then what are you going to do with all...with everything I've just told you?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. Nothing, I suppose." _Understand you, if I can_.

"You're really just going to let it go? You? After finally hitting the jackpot?"

"Well it's kind of a disappointment when you find out that a. someone handed you the winning ticket because they want you to use your winnings to do their bloody work for them, and b. do that work on someone you are actually quite fond of and have no desire whatsoever to see in prison, no matter how much of a sneaky bastard son of a bitch they happen to be!"

Lex raised his eyebrows. "Quite fond of." he repeated dully. "I have been saved by the fondness you feel for me." He shook his head. "Christ, I'd almost rather you threw me for the dogs."

She looked at him sharply. "You are the one who freaks out when I tell you I love you." Indeed, he flinched. His nerves were probably as raw as hers at the moment, and without his mask, he couldn't insulate them against either her emotions or his own. Chloe suddenly had the strangest sensation: a desire to protect him instead of force him to disclose every secret he'd carefully hidden in the basement of his soul. It truly was the oddest thought; she'd felt a lot of things for Lex but never the need to protect him. He was too damned vulnerable without his mask. She almost wished he'd put it back on already.

"Look where it got me," Lex said flatly, and she had to roll back their conversation to understand what he was saying.

She shook her head. "Lex, me telling you I love you hasn't brought this upon you."

"You're not the only one," Lex said, and then he visibly bit his tongue and looked away. And she felt sorry for him, then, and guilty as well, even though he deserved every minute of this hell and plenty more too. It was true, the poor bastard had lost everyone who had ever told him they loved him.

"No," she conceded. She reached out and placed both hands on his cheeks, forcing him to look back at her. "But I'm still here, am I not? I'm not going anywhere."

"Huh," he said. "Guess I still have a hard time accepting that." That was a flat-out challenge, but she took it and reflected it back at him.

"Accept it."

"Or what?" he covered her hands on his cheeks with his own, then pulled hers away and put them back in her lap, his movements suddenly slow and almost painful. "You just gutted me, do you understand that? You tore everything out of me that I've ever kept hidden away, and you still have the knife in your hand." He gestured at her article. "That. And whatever else he gave to you. You can still use it to destroy me."

"I'll burn it."

"You'll hate yourself for the rest of your life."

Chloe frowned, getting angry. "So what do you want me to do, then, Lex?"

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath. "I want you to tell me what you want."

"I just told you that."

"You told me you were fond of me, and that that 'fondness' has saved me from…"

"Christ god, Lex, this is not the moment to start nitpicking!"

"I think this is the perfect moment to start nitpicking. Do you…do you love me or are you fond of me? Did you force me to tell you all of this because you wanted to see me belly-up, or…"

"No!"

"Then why? Did it make you feel powerful? Or was this some psychological experiment? Purge everything and get it out of the way?"

"No! Lex…"

"Or was this a test to see if I'd actually talk if you'd just push hard enough?" He stood up again, and grabbed his glass from his desk. "I mean," he continued, splashing whiskey into his glass and spilling half of it over the rim, "do you have any idea how agonizingly _painful_ this has been? Not knowing whether you were going to publicly crucify me and my company? Not knowing what…what was real, what…if anything we had, everything I thought we had, if that was real, or that you were just going to be the next one to screw me over?"

"You could have called," Chloe said quietly. "Sooner. If you'd called me the same day I…"

He looked at her as if her hair was on fire. "Called you?" he said disbelievingly. "After what you _said_ to me? What should I have said to you? _Sorry_? Sorry I lied to you? Sorry my actions forced you to betray me and take over from the guy who almost killed me? God, yes, why didn't I think of that? Calling you would have provided an instant solution!" He tossed back his drink with an angry jerk of his head. "I have my pride as well, you know. And I'm getting _fucking_ tired of people judging me for things that have nothing to do with them, and for going behind my back to find those things if I don't tell them myself."

A cold finger seemed to trail along Chloe's back. She'd come here with the grand anticipation of forgiving Lex for his sins; it had never occurred to her that he might not be ready to humbly fall to his knees and take her back with tears of gratitude. She'd been so filled with righteous anger it never entered her mind he might be just as angry with her. It surprised her how much the thought that he'd send her away terrified her…enough to turn her stomach and make her hands clench on her jeans.

Introverted people made lousy reporters. "So," she said, swallowing to wet her throat, "are you saying you don't want me back?"

"Of course I want you back. Don't be ridiculous. But what I am saying," Lex said, "is that I want to know if you want _me_ back, and, more importantly, why? You were quite resolved to hate me. Now you claim you've changed your mind? Are you sure about that? Because if it hasn't actually changed, your conviction's going to hang over my head like Damocles' sword, and I doubt that would make for a healthy relationship."

Chloe grimaced. "Your father said exactly the same thing."

"Then let me rephrase that," Lex said hastily, and she had to laugh. And suddenly she wasn't scared anymore, because really, it was so very easy after all.

"The reason I changed my mind," she began, "and the reason why I want you back, is that I love you. I told you that before. I'm sorry it's so banally simple, but it is. In the end the thought of ever using this against you, to, as you put it, publicly crucify you…I couldn't do it. Ever. And I do understand why you kept it a secret—really, I do. Just like I wasn't all that happy with Clark for not trusting me, I understood why he didn't, but I didn't like it. However, Clark never put me in dangers because he wouldn't tell me he's some kind of super guy. Your secrets almost got me shot, and at least abducted and used. That I fell for Edge's bait…that's my fault, and I admit that that's a weakness of mine. In the beginning, Edge literally had an edge over me, but after he shot you, I should have trusted you, even if you didn't trust me, even if you did lie to me—I should have taken your word over Edge's, and I didn't. And for that I'm sorry. All the more because I knew how painful this all must have been for you, and I still did it. But I'm still here, Lex."

"You're forgiving me?" he'd have sounded sarcastic if there hadn't been so much hope in his voice.

"No. I'm accepting it as a part of you. Having projects like these…it's not really something you can forgive, is it?"

"You're not going to make me stop them?"

"Would you do that, if I asked?" Chloe asked. "Would you really, and not resent me? And if you did put a halt to them, would you not start them up again at a later date?" She shook her head. "I'm not going to make demands here—it wouldn't work. If you were to promise me to tell me everything, everything at all you were doing, how long would it take before you'd think 'Oh, this isn't a secret, it's so trivial she just doesn't need to know'? You do things as they strike you, not because they're good, or legal, or even profitable. You do things because you want to do them, and if it is illegal you'll relativize your reasons and the outcome until it makes perfect sense, and just do it."

Lex was silent, his body still, but she still got the impression he was fidgeting. She gave him time to formulate his thoughts, and in the end he said, "I can't change myself. I tried, before, with Helen, and with Clark, and it didn't work. What's more," He looked her in the eyes, and behind his own guerrilla mode was slowly powering up to blazing intensity, "I don't _want_ to have to change. Not anymore. You said you liked me the way I was, and then you decided you didn't. Now you claim you accept me, and I can't help wondering if you really do. Because I'm _not_ going through this again. I can't. I WON'T! I'm not going to continue this relationship if you have the power to rip out my heart whenever you feel like it, you got that, I won't do that again! Christ, do you have ANY idea what…!?" He stopped abruptly, and bang! his mask was back again, safely covering up all that pain and anger and fear, leaving him looking calm, white and composed.

It really was extraordinary how convincing it was, that mask, and how completely it hid his emotions.

"Sorry," Lex said calmly. He put his hands in his pockets. Bitter amusement twisted his lip. "I guess I'm worn a little raw."

…_and this is HIS way of testing me, _Chloe realized. He was bombarding her with the full scale of Luthor schizophrenia, from one extreme to the other, and now he was observing if she could cope. Well, she could. It was scary as hell, and made her feel as if she were having a conversation with not one man but with three or four at the same time…but oh, it was so enlightening. _You're such a coffee bean, _she thought, and even though at least one of the personas he'd let shimmering through was dangerously volatile, she was no longer afraid of him.

"Me too," she said, mirroring back both calm and amusement. She'd learned that at a journalist training, mirroring. Interviews went more smoothly if you mirrored the other person's expressions. She had no idea if Lex saw through it or not. He probably did. Luckily she was speaking the truth. "Exhausted, even."

Lex dropped his test. "Yeah," he muttered. He rubbed the bruise on his forehead, then cast a glance at the clock. "Almost twelve. You shouldn't drive in the dark. If you want I can…There's…Well, I have five guest rooms."

"Actually," Chloe said, "I was kind of hoping we could sleep in the same bed."

Lex raised his eyebrows, and her cheeks heated up so fast she felt a little dizzy and more than a little stupid. But then he smiled, a quick glint of true humor.

"Sure. But I have to warn you I've gone back to my old territorial sleeping behavior."

"I said I'd accepted you, didn't I," she returned, and Lex observed her with a very serious, considering expression.

"Yes," he said quietly. "You did."

TBC

Next: Sweet, romantic love-scene in which Lex and Chloe tenderly express their undying devotion to eacho—eh…wrong story  Next is sex. And it isn't going to be cute.


	33. Chapter 33

Hello there Hello there! This chapter is NC-17 again, both because of sexual situations and weird mental things. Thirty-three: In which Lex and Chloe make war through love

They prepared for bed in different bathrooms. Chloe brushed her teeth with a toothbrush she had to take out of its casing, using paste from a tube that no one had ever used before. They entered the room at the same time, got into bed and Lex turned off the light by pressing a button somewhere.

It was supremely awkward.

Chloe lay on her back, listening to the faint hum of Lex's alarm clock, counting her heartbeats. Her chest felt constricted_. I should have gone home. This was a mistake. It's over_.

Another minute ticked by. They lay side by side on their backs, not moving, trying not even to breathe.

Her eyes prickled. She didn't know if it was of gathering tears or her inability to blink. _God, this is a disaster. I should have gone home. Why didn't I go home? Or at least stay in the guest room? _She turned her head towards Lex, maybe to tell him that this was not such a good idea after all, and at that very moment he rolled from his back to his stomach, sat up and launched himself at her; claimed her mouth, wrenched her legs apart and drove in.

She squeaked in alarm and a little with pain, although her body was so used to his weight and scent it slicked up after the first two thrusts or so; this was so different from his usual m.o. it scared her.

"Mmmph!" she screamed, only succeeding to make a muffled sound as he pushed his tongue deeper into her mouth. He tasted of mint and alcohol. _Stop it! Stop it!_

Her hands clawed and pushed at his shoulders and arms, but he caught her wrists, hauled them up to the head board and gathered them together in one hand while using his other to clutch her more tightly to him.

Chloe struggled and bucked, with the only result that Lex got a better angle, and while she was furious about this unexpected, violent, undignified fucking RAPE, having Lex lose all control did hold some strange kind of twisted appeal.

As a matter of fact it was fucking hot. It was also EXACTLY what she'd had in mind, maybe even HOPED he would do.

And that was about as insane as they came, Chloe thought. She arched her back, trying to throw him off, or maybe pull him closer, and he rammed in and god, it was _good_! Sex this rough, without restraint, made the nerves in her brain crackle and sent lights through her head like fireworks. Her back arched again, her legs curled up on their own accord but he pushed them flat with his one free hand, spreading them wider.

"Oh no you won't," Lex growled against her mouth. "You wanted the real me? I'll fucking give you what you asked for."

No more mister controlled Sarcastic. He wasn't even pretending to be considerate, just pounded away into her, and it hurt and she struggled and bit and cursed at him like the vilest hussy she'd ever had to interview for a drug addict article, and she gasped his name and cried, "Yes, god, yes, harder!" because at the same time it felt so goddamn good it was as if he was literally fucking her to heaven.

"Harder?" Lex panted. "You want that? Harder?"

"Yes…yes, come on. Come on, damn it," she spat. "You think you got me helpless here, huh, you lying son of a bitch? Well show me! Come on. Show me god damn it! Show me!" And then all she could do was shriek his name because that was exactly what he did: push her down, go harder and render her helpless.

It was only when his thrusts began to stutter that something urgently rapped her mind.

"Lex, wait!"

Lex lifted his head from her neck and crushed her lips under his, his rhythm not even faltering and god if he went on like this…if he went on like this…

She sank her teeth in his lower lip, biting hard enough to draw blood, and he reared back with an exclamation of real pain. A salt tang filled her mouth; she could feel drops of it sliding down her chin. Chloe jerked one of her hands free from his grip and used it to push him away.

"Stop it! Lex, wait!"

"I…_can't_…" Lex snarled. He made a grab for the offending hand, but she balled it into a fist and hit him straight between the eyes on the fading bruise caused by careless driving—not very hard, but hard enough to temporarily stun him.

"Chuck Norris!" she screamed as he released her other wrist as well to bring both hands to his face, gasping "Bitch!" and dribbling blood on her chest. "Jesus Christ, Lex, I don't want to get pregnant."

For a few seconds, Lex just lay on top of her, panting heavily. She could feel him pulse inside of her, and for a moment she was afraid he'd come after all and her currently residing ova would be assaulted by an army of meteor-enhanced ultra-penetrating sperm cells, but then he raised his head and swallowed thickly.

"What?" he whispered dumbly.

Thank heavens. _Houston, we have contact_; he'd stopped. First objective accomplished, she immediately set to completing the next, twisted her arm and grabbed for the handle of the drawer of the night stand next to her.

"I don't…want to get pregnant. You told me yourself, oral contraception's not enough. Now where do you keep those bloody things?"

"You don't want to…" Lex repeated hoarsely, and then he buried his face between her breasts with a sound that might be either a laugh or a sob, and most likely was both. "Fuck, Chloe, you kill me, you know that?"

"Same here, rich boy. Now where are—ha!" Victory came to those who persevered. She tore the wrapper open with her teeth, removed the condom, threw the cellophane aside and pushed Lex's side to make him roll over. "Move it! Get this on."

"Maybe I shouldn't," Lex said tonelessly. He wiped his lip. "I don't think I'm capable of being…"

"If you stop now," Chloe hissed, "I'm going to BITE it OFF, Lex, and that's a _fucking_ promise."

He still didn't move. "I'll hurt you," he said, stating a fact, not a warning. It occurred to her that he _was_ mad at her for what she'd done. He might have said he'd forgiven her, but he hadn't, yet, not really. She could feel his fury coiling beneath his skin like a fever.

Chloe nodded. She knew _exactly_ how he was feeling. "I'll hurt you back."

Lex pursed his mouth in that considering way of his, licked more blood from his lip and smirked angrily. Then he inclined his head, plucked the condom from her fingers. "Fine," he grated out. He twisted around, got himself protected and sat up on his knees. "Turn around."

Alarm flashed through her. "No, I don't think…"

"Turn. Around," he growled, and flipped her over as if she weighed nothing. "Christ, have I ever done anything to hurt you? Don't be absurd." There was enough irrationality in that statement after that first threatening 'I'll hurt you' to make Chloe bark a laugh, but she didn't laugh long. "Grab the head board," Lex said, putting his hands on her hips and pulling her up to a kneeling position. His chest curved over her back, smooth and hard and surprisingly warm. And even though the situation was completely different, Chloe remembered the feeling of his glass windows in Metropolis, and although the fingers gripping her flesh bit a little too hard she was no longer afraid.

So he wasn't completely in control.

Big deal. She never was when it came to sex, at least not sex with _him_. And if he hurt her…well, she'd hurt him back. _First blood to me, anyway._ She grinned, then tightened her fingers on the head board as Lex's blood-flecked lips touched her ear and whispered, "Better hold on tight."

And then she lost all conscious thought as he went on with what he had been doing before she sucker punched him; and if it hurt (and it did) and if Lex, for the first time since she'd tumbled into bed with him, didn't care about her physical pleasure (which, she thought later, he probably was wholly unable to at that point), but simply used her body to _get. the hell. off! _she really couldn't give one flying fuck. It pretty much worked for her. It worked brilliantly.

Two thrusts and she was back to panting and moaning, five and she sobbed his name into her wrists, ten and he moved his hands to her breasts—hands that were rough but nevertheless seemed to sense when to stop squeezing before they left bruises— tweaked her nipples and then she came with some kind of bestial growl, body convulsing around his while he held her locked tight against his chest, his arms crossed over her chest, pinning her in place until she stopped gasping.

Lex laughed softly. "There's no faking with you, is there?" he murmured mockingly, kissed her neck and then bit down gently on the same place. She must taste salty. Her skin was damp with perspiration. "Do you know what I really love about your body?"

"Do tell," Chloe breathed.

"Actually, there are a few things. One," he gave her neck another lick, "is that you grow bright red when you come. All over. I can see it even in the dark. You wouldn't be able to fake it if you wanted to. And another…" His right hand slid down from her breast and went down to the triangle of pubic hair, "is that you need NO…" One of his fingers dipped in and just touched her clitoris, "recovery time." He pressed down and circled, and her hips rocked into his touch, instantly agreeing that yes, she was ready to continue if he was, and Lex, by the feel of it, was still more than ready. "You have no idea how rare that is."

"I must say I appreciate your constitution," she responded. "Especially after all that alcohol you knocked away." She wished she could speak as dryly as he could, but even if she didn't need any recovery time, she was still hypersensitive and forming educated sentences was becoming more and more difficult as he just kept stroking that way.

_And we started out so well, with him NOT in control. So what changed that? Isn't he mad at me anymore?_ She was not making the mistake thinking that Lex telling her he loved her body meant he was being tender. He was still wound too tight, breathing too harshly, and his hands were still too demanding. He was also still—not again—hard and she wondered why he hadn't blown his brains out the moment she did.

"The effects of alcohol on sex are immensely underrated," Lex answered her, both in return to her remark and to the question she'd formed in her head. "As long as you can handle it, of course."

"Yeah…" she panted, and he chuckled again. Suddenly something struck her as odd, and she said, "Why would I fake orgasms?" Even if she turned red (and she'd have to check that in a mirror because she simply didn't believe that), she'd never faked an orgasm, not with Lex at any case: there was no need to fake anything because he always made her come.

"Because…" he hissed, "you've been a right little deceiver as well, haven't you?"

"WAT?" She pulled free and turned around, met eyes glittering with anger. _Oh brother. Here we go again._ "I apologized for that."

"You apologized for _betraying_ me," Lex corrected. "You've spent an entire evening accusing me of lying to you but all the while, and that only just occurred to me, you've been lying to me as well. How am I ever going to trust you again?"

"We've been over this! You just _do_."

"It occurred to me…exactly when did you start following Edge's trail of bread crumbs? Before Paris? Or after? How did he approach you anyway, and when? I never noticed, so you managed to hide it very well, and that doesn't mean much good for this 'trust' you're so big on."

The old anger flared red behind Chloe's eyelids. "I only did what any woman would have done…"

"Any woman?" Lex said scathingly.

"In the face of such blatant lies!"

"All you had was a HUNCH!"

"And look how spectacularly RIGHT I was!"

"YOU weren't right! _Edge_ was!"

"He was right, alright!"

"He didn't know a damn thing!"

"No, he was wrong, he didn't know a thing about how CRIMINAL that bloody mind of you actually is! He was SO right, though! You are SUCH a BASTARD!"

"Oh, is that soooo?" Lex hissed, and at that part they literally threw themselves at each other like a pair of bantam roosters.

If Chloe had seen such a scene on TV, she would have chuckled, shaken her head and muttered, "Get a room," under her breath. Participating IN such a scene, she found out, didn't make it less ridiculous but turned out to be exhilarating in a very twisted yet invigorating way.

Lex tried to push her down. Males always tried to push you down. He had the strength but Chloe had nails. They weren't particularly long but well taken care of, filed to oval perfection and finished with translucent polish. When Lex pressed her down and shoved inside of her again, she planted those nails in his shoulders and raked as if her fingers were a plow and his skin a field of earth. He gave a grunt of pain, which made her grin with sadistic satisfaction.

_Hurt me, Lex? I'll make you spill heart's blood, you son of a bitch!_ He pushed her deeper into the mattress and she clawed all the way down to his shoulder blades.

"Ow, fuck!" Lex gasped, and then she kind of lost control for a while. She had the feeling he did, too.

"Chloe."

"Chloe."

"Chloe." Lex's voice was muffled with what was either pain or laughter or a mouthful of her hair. His weight was heavy on top of her but he was no longer thrusting. "Stop fighting."

She bucked up and tore down and he groaned a little. Her fingertips were wet.

"Chloe! Stop it, will you! You're digging up my spine!"

_Good!_ She thought hazily. _Good!_ Then reason reasserted itself, and she relaxed her fingers. One of her nails actually stuck before she dropped her hands down.

Lex raised his face from beside her head and spat out a lock of hair. His mouth was quivering between mirth and grimacing. "Well…" he said softly, "that was…unexpected. If I get off of you, do you promise not to attack me again?"

Unable to speak, she nodded. Her fingertips were WET!

Lex pushed away from her and flopped on his back, hissing out a curse as he landed on the sheet, immediately followed by a huff of laughter. He went through his usual semi-conscious removal of protection and tossed it into the bin in the corner. Then he rolled to his side and reached out one hand to cup her cheek.

_Why the hell isn't he mad?!_

Chloe was still too stunned both by the stickiness on and under her nails and the languidness of her body to flinch—and she didn't need to, either. Instead of bestowing more half-cruel passion Lex leaned forward and kissed her, gently, tenderly, deeply, without a hint of that livid anger. At first she was so astounded she lay frozen in place, then she reached out her bloody fingers and wrapped them around the back of his head, pulling him closer. He'd gained another flavor. He now tasted of mint, alcohol and blood.

_He's insane, _she thought, and decided she should be a lot more worried than she was. _He's stark raving mad and he's going to drive me crazy as well. We're both going to end up in Belle Reve. And god, there he goes again. Aren't men supposed to go limp at one point, and fall into a coma?_ If so, she'd never noticed with Lex. He must have some sort of bipolar energy cell installed somewhere that enabled him to have sex forever. For the moment, however, he just held her and kissed her, and for the first time since she entered the bed she actually thought everything might turn out alright after all.

After an eternity of kissing, he pulled back, and even in the dark she could see the lopsided apologetic smirk as he stared down on her. She returned it, then sighed. "Again?"

"Oh yes, again. Or are you going to rip me open some more?"

Chloe blushed, although she did not feel the need to apologize. "No."

"Good! Otherwise I might have to chain you to the bed and spank you." He pulled open the drawer on the other side of the bed.

Chloe was not entirely sure he was joking. "I'm not into spanking."

"That's a relief."

"You're not either?"

"No. Neither on the delivering part or on the receiving part." Another empty condom's wishes were fulfilled. "The first makes me feel like I'm rearing a child, and that's not the kind of feeling I'm looking for in bed. The second…well…" He smiled brightly. "I'm sure you can guess."

_Excelsior? Lionel? Kinky evenings at even kinkier clubs?_ She could guess alright, but she decided she was not interested in the outcome. "Yes," she said, and Lex nodded and kissed her again.

She didn't know how often they did it that night, only that they must have made a sizable dent in Lex's collection of Durex. With ever growing nonchalance he tied them off and threw them into the corner. They'd fall asleep for a moment, then either would wake up, grab for the rubbers and initiate. After that one tender, normal session—make love, not war—, there was another violent one that had her sucking Lex's lip until the bite opened up and started bleeding again, although she made sure not to put her hands on his back again; and while Lex did not exactly hurt her in return, he did display all those nasty domineering traits that made her fight like a cat which, she found out, only served to make him lose himself.

Lex losing control was pretty hot, but it was also a bit dangerous. Lex himself, she realized, LOATHED losing control like that and did anything to avoid it. Caught up in a frenzy where provoking was more important than climaxing, Chloe fought him until he lost his temper and thereby his control, accepted the pain of fingers digging into her thighs and relished the broken string of curses he uttered before collapsing on top of her in a boneless heap.

After that one, which left them both out of breath and stunned, Lex stepped into his pants, slipped out of the room and returned with a bowl of shaved ice, two bottles of mineral water and two glasses and they spent a few quiet minutes recuperating and sipping cold water.

Her wrists were throbbing, and so was the rest of her body. That did not stop her from waking up one hour later and, upon finding Lex spread out on his back with his hands resting over his head, crawling between his legs and get him ready for another round.

By now the smooth, slippery surface of the condoms felt as if it were decorated with tiny fish hooks. She ignored it. The need to get _close_, under his kin if she could, was greater than the physical discomfort.

One hour later Lex solved this problem by going down on her.

When gentle but persistent hands caressed her out of sleep again, Chloe groaned out a protest. Opening her eyes was so difficult she almost gave up on it. She managed to get one look at the alarm—5:39—and let her eyelids dropped closed again, moaning. "Nooo…Don't, don't, I'm too sore."

"That really is too bad," Lex said, slipping a testing finger inside of her. "I'll be careful, then." He was careful, entering so smoothly and moving so gently she hardly felt it at all. The only thing she felt was the soft stroke of his fingers, over and over again until her body surrendered, orgasm mild and warm, pleasurable in the truest sense of the word, and hardly more intense than a tight hug. She sighed, settling back against the warmth of Lex's front, and cried one tear, beautiful in its dramatic imagery, when he kissed her neck. She didn't even know if it was a tear of relief or pure exhaustion, and it disappeared into her pillow without further notice. She turned over and draped her arm over his chest, kissing the smooth bit of skin in front of her mouth before laying her head on his shoulder and falling asleep again.

"No." Lex said, pronunciation clear but voice muddled with sleep. "No. Go away. Let me go."

Chloe's consciousness had to come from such depths she experienced waking up as physically painful. The slow rise of her psyche was rapidly sped up, however, when she was brutally pushed off the warm body she was partly draped over and the body in question jerked up straight in the most dramatic wide-eyed, panting-in-terror awakening from a nightmare she'd ever witnessed in another person.

"Uh, Lex," she said, putting a tentative hand on his chest at the height of his breast bone, but he slapped her off with such panic she leaned away and decided it would be better to let him wake up properly before attempting to touch him again. "Lex," she repeated instead. "Lex, you're awake. It was just a dream. You're safe. Calm down, you're in bed with me and you're safe."

He swallowed, still panting, slowly turned his face towards her voice.

"You're safe," she repeated, and at that point his face crumpled and he clutched his head in his hands and curved his upper body between his knees with some kind of low keening cry that made her stiffen in alarm.

"Lex?" she asked, pushing herself up on her elbow. "Are you ok?"

"My head is splitting in two," Lex choked out. He pulled up his legs and curled up even more—any further and he'd be fetal.

Chloe hunkered down next to him, now wide awake and torn by guilt and worry. _I hit him. He crashed his bloody car and probably concussed himself and then I came by and made him relive all those horrible things and…Oh god you poor thing, I hit you, too._

"Do you feel sick?" she asked, searching for signs of concussion. She touched the back of his neck, the only place close to his head she could reach. It was clammy but cool. "Are you nauseous?"

"No…" Lex moaned.

"Do you want me to get a doctor?"

"No…"

"Do you want an aspirin?"

"Yes…"

And again she had to smile, even though it really wasn't funny. "Ok, I'll go and get one. Where do you keep them, in the bathroom?"

"Yes…"

He was clearly feeling utterly miserable, but somehow the petulance in his single-syllable replies struck her as comical. _I am an evil woman, _she thought as she stepped out of bed. She winced. _Although not entirely unreasonably so. Hell, but I'm sore!_

The bathroom light hurt her eyes and she searched the cabinet with her eyes half-closed. She was surprised at the amount of bottles with medicines she found—Lex was never ill; why would he need all that medication? A closer look told her that most of the bottles were almost empty and contained half-finished treatments consisting mainly of pain killers and sedatives.

_A bottle for every bullet, trashing and concussion, _Chloe figured, and again she felt that twinge of guilt. She doubted normal people's skulls could survive the number of head injuries Lex's poor cranium had gone through without turning into a cracked container of mush. Really, it was no wonder the man was a little mad. If Clark put his X-ray on Lex, did he see all those hairline fractures in his skull like a map on a globe?

_Right. I hereby vow I won't hit him again, not in the head, not ever. Scratch him, kick his shins and slap him silly, but I won't hit him ever again._

She picked up a small plastic orange container with oblong white pills, checked the prescription and the date it was written out on, and decided that it was probably safe to give him acetaminophen, since he'd had that prescribed after an earlier meeting between his head and something significantly less giving. She shook out two pills, filled a glass with water and padded back into the bedroom.

Lex was still coiled up tight enough to fit into a moving box. "Here," she said, pushing the glass into his hand. "Give me your other hand. Here you go. It's acetaminophen. Is that alright?"

"Mm." He tossed back the pills and the water, and Chloe resisted the urge to ask him if he were feeling better. He wouldn't be, not after ten seconds. She wondered if she should check his pupils—but he wasn't nauseous, or so he said, and he'd seemed pretty much ok before now. Ok enough to screw her through hell to heaven and back.

She sighed and lay back down, rested her hand on his back. He wasn't exactly thin, but the knobs of his vertebrae stood out and formed a hard bumpy ridge under her stroking fingers. Her nails hadn't reached this low. "Why don't you lie down?" she suggested, and tugged gently at his shoulder until he gave in and stretched out beside her. "Come here. Put your head on my shoulder. There."

She felt the curl of his smile against her skin, but he still didn't speak; he just mm-ed again as she stroked the back of his head. Startled, she pulled her hand away. "I'm sorry, did I hurt you?"

"No," he said softly. "I think it actually helps."

"My golden touch," Chloe scoffed. "Works best combined with pain killers." She traced her fingers over the odd ridges of his skull and tried to remember what he'd felt like with hair. "I'm so sorry. I'm really sorry I hit you."

Now she felt the warmth of breath as he huffed out a silent laugh. "This isn't your fault," he murmured, squeezing her hip.

"No, it's the fault of your concussion. Me planting my fist in your face couldn't have helped, though. How hard did you hit your head anyway?"

"Pretty damn hard. Got the logo of my Ferrari stamped into my forehead."

"You're kidding me."

"Nope."

"That wound was in the shape of a horse?"

"Mm."

She was quiet for a while. Overtired as she was, she thought the situation seemed surreal, as was their conversation. Lex grew progressively heavier and warmer as he drifted closer to sleep but Chloe herself felt strangely wakeful.

"Do you often dream of Edge?" she asked finally.

Lex's breathing stopped, then continued, slow and even. "No," he muttered. "Yes. No. I didn't dream about Edge."

She frowned. "You didn't?"

"No."

"Then what's giving you nightmares like that?" Lex remained silent; she could almost believe he'd fallen asleep. He was too tense to be asleep. "Lex? What happened to you in the few days I wasn't with you?" she asked. "Was there a reason you crashed your car?"

"No," he said immediately. "I crashed my car because I miscalculated my brake way and my tires slipped in the snow."

"Then what HAPPENED to you?"

He sighed and pushed his nose into the globe of her left breast, effectively rendering himself quite unable to speak.

"Lex?" He was really starting to scare her. What on earth could be more terrifying and night terror-inspiring than that whole thing with Edge?

"Chloe." Lex surfaced from her chest, eyes opened at a slit and still drawn with pain. "I promised to you I wouldn't lie to you anymore, and I won't. But please…give me a break. Please give me a break. Time-out. I'm fine, really, I'm just…desperately tired. So please let me sleep."

"If you have a concussion…"

"I don't have a concussion. I'm just tired. Why won't people believe me when I tell them I don't have a concussion? Why do people keep waking me up to tell me I have a concussion? I don't have a concussion, I just want to go to sleep!"

"Right, ok," Chloe shushed. She pulled his head back onto her shoulder, afraid he was going to burst into tears if she kept badgering him. "Go to sleep, then. It's alright, I won't ask you anymore questions. Go to sleep. How's your head?"

"Mm," Lex murmured, and two seconds later he was fast asleep again. Just like that, as if she'd pressed his off button: he went limp and slept.

Chloe remained awake for a few more minutes, counting his breaths until she was sure he wouldn't just stop pulling them in and blowing them out. _Maybe_, she thought, quite humbly, _this is the only kind of trust he really needs. Someone to catch him when he falls and hold him together when he breaks apart. Alright. I can do that. Me being the one who broke him this time, I can do that._

She closed her eyes, shifted to a more comfortable position and fell asleep as well.

Morning had broken.

Lex much shared the sentiment. He felt as if both his body and his mind had been torn up to little pieces, chewed up and spat out again. At least that crippling headache was gone—completely gone, as if it had never risen up and almost killed him. His lip had healed but was still tender when he prodded it with his tongue, and his back stung as he turned over to observe the person who had been the cause of this questionable state.

She was looking much as he felt: face drawn and pale, eyes shadowed and half-lidded, turning away from the ceiling to regard him without expression. Her mouth was red and swollen still, curled in a self-deprecating smirk.

"Hey," she croaked. "How's your head?" She rubbed a hand over her face.

"Hey," he whispered back. "Better." He winced as he noticed her wrist; yes, he had left bruises. Nothing as dramatic as Clark had done with him, but still: faint, dark smudges. _Well, that makes both of us rapists. We have more in common than I thought. Well, not really. If I recall it correctly she threatened to castrate me if I stopped. Still, that's no way to treat a girl, not even when you're pissed off. I think I might need help. _Carefully, making sure he did not make any brusque movements, he picked up the hand that lay limply on the mattress and guiltily studied the bluish stripes before pressing his lips against them. "I'm sorry," he said. "For this. I'm sorry if I hurt you. I didn't mean to."

She gave a small snort. "Turn around."

"Mm?"

"Turn around." He did, showing her his back, and hissed as she trailed fingers over the scratch marks. They must have been pretty deep if they still smarted like that. "I guess I displayed my own share of violent behavior. And meant every bit of it, too."

"Huh," said Lex, and dropped back onto his stomach. Aggressive bitch. The bed looked like a battlefield: there was a rip in the sheet and on his side the pillow and the duvet were stained with red-brown smears from his lip and shoulders. Chloe closed her eyes again. Exhausted, Lex followed her example.

When he woke up again it was because slender fingers were tracing a line on his forehead, around the bruise, down the bridge of his nose, over his mouth and down to his chin. He kept his eyes closed for a moment longer because it felt like a caress, quite tender and loving, then gathered his courage and opened them. Chloe smiled at him, her expression as sweet as her touch.

"Sorry," she said. "Not for ripping your back open; you deserved that. But for the rest..."

"What should you be sorry for? It isn't as if you've done anything wrong." Apart from that betrayal thing. But hey, he could be forgiving if she could.

"Maybe not. But I could have been less...I don't know. Narrow-minded."

Lex smiled. If anyone was not narrow-minded it was her. "I do love you, you know," she continued, resting the palm of her hand on his cheek. "All of you. Even the nasty parts. It wouldn't be fair to only accept what I like and condemn what I don't. I _knew_ you were doing things that'd land you in prison if you were ever found out. I mean, I searched for those things, all these years. It was one of my everlasting projects: find the dirty Luthor laundry and hang it out to dry in full view of the entire world." She sighed. "I've always hated being hit with a wet towel."

"Perhaps you should buy a dryer," Lex suggested.

Chloe shot him a stern glance. "I'm being serious here."

"Sorry. I thought I'd complete the analogy."

Her frown deepened, and then she grinned, suddenly, and shook her head. "You're such an asshole, Lex. I mean, seriously, you're a prick."

He sucked on his painful lip to keep from saying that there was a distinct difference between an asshole and a prick, but she followed his train of thought and started to laugh. "Don't say anything. Not a word, Lex."

"I wouldn't dare," Lex said demurely. She raised her eyebrows at him and sat up—and huffed out a startled, painful 'Ahahaoww!'

Lex opened his eyes wide in alarm. "What is it?"

"Jesus Christ you pulped my insides!" she moaned.

Lex had a disturbing flash of fucking a water melon, and then an even more disturbing flash of Chloe sitting down on an orange press. He ducked his head. "Sorry." He thought about offering to kiss it better, but this was probably not the right moment.

Slowly, she dragged herself out of bed, her movements stiff and somewhat jerky. Lex sat up as if his chest was tied to her body.

"Where are you going?"

"Pee," she said in that very earthy manner he still needed to get used to. "And take a shower." She cast a glance back at him, considering. "You can join me?" she suggested.

Lex thought about it. In any other circumstance he would have said 'sure!' and skipped towards the nearest bathroom, but now he took his time to think about it.

"No sex, though," Chloe warned, and he smiled. His face felt weird.

"Sure," he said. "No sex."

"Let me pee first," Chloe said, and moved into the bathroom.

Lex used the respite to first call James on the house phone and tell him to have breakfast ready in a quarter of an hour, and then Mary, to say that he was not going to return within the next few hours and that if anything urgent came up, she should call him.

Then he got out of bed, feeling a little like a marionette with its strings cut: oddly unbalanced, earthbound and slow. His body would have liked to sleep for a couple of hours more. Hell, his mind would have enjoyed a few more hours of senseless bliss too.

_Too bad, body. So sorry, mind._ He shook his head, wary of any pain, but apart from the stuffiness caused by fatigue, he was feeling pretty much alright; tired, still, but alright.

Chloe stuck her head out of the bathroom. "I'm done," she said. She studied him for a moment. "You look like shit. Are you sure your head's ok? I was afraid you were having a stroke or something, yesterd—this morning."

"_Molto bene_," Lex muttered. He shouldered his way past her into the bathroom. "I still look better than you."

"Is that so?"

"Of course I do. Here, look in the mirror. I don't have dark-rimmed eyes—well, not half as bad as you do."

"Your lower lip's swollen."

"Bee sting. It's sexy."

"Sexy Le-"

"If you say Lexy I will commit justified homicide."

"I bit you. I can still see my teeth marks."

"Oh, look at those lovely bruises on your wrists! And look, here are some more! They look so nice on you."

"Lex, did you have a good close look at that thing on your forehead?"

"Ah, but I did that myself."

"Your back…"

"Can't see that in the mirror."

"You look positively pasty."

"That's my natural color, thank you very much. Unlike that pallor you're sporting right now."

"That's not pallor, that's a fair skin tone, you bastard."

"Caucasian abused female. The new facial teint by Vichy."

Chloe huffed. She turned on the shower. "Lex. You didn't abuse me. You did a lot that hurt me but trust me, it wasn't physical. Well, not entirely."

Lex snorted. The guilt trip was comforting in a strange way. How unfortunate Chloe wasn't about to let him continue on this road. She held her hand under the flow, pulled back, adjusted the temperature. Lex closed his eyes and leaned against the basin. Sex. Blood. Pain. The various scents of it were still in his nostrils, like smoke. He frowned a little, and the scab on his forehead stung as his skin pulled it double. _Those scents don't belong together. I don't want to remember them together._ The gentle fragrance of lemongrass chased the frown away and he breathed it in deeply. He started as a wet hand touched his shoulder.

"Don't fall asleep standing up," Chloe said. She had already lathered up her hair and suds of foam slid down her face. Lex wiped them out of eyes' way. Her mouth curved. "Come on," she said. "Get in. I'm starving."

But they stood under the shower for over ten minutes, Chloe's back against Lex's front, her arms wrapped around his, curled around her shoulders, just standing in a cloud of lemongrass-scented steam while the hot water rinsed the soap from Chloe's hair and the dried blood from Lex's back.

They sat at the breakfast table with James drifting around them, pouring coffee, providing toast, jam, scrambled eggs and orange juice.

Chloe was ravenous and devoured eight pieces of toast and a heap of eggs, Lex matched her fork for fork at an even greater pace.

He looked like a glutinous ghost in a white shirt; the flush from the shower had faded before he'd sat down and even after three mugs of coffee he was still so pale he was almost translucent.

As for herself, the feeling of otherworldliness had returned, the result, she presumed, of consuming a huge amount of carbohydrates, fats and fiber after a night consisting of a maximum of four hours sleep after five days of mental turmoil and physical sickness. And that was without mentioning the outrageous amount of sexual warfare they'd practiced. When she finally put down her cutlery because she had finished eating, she found herself zoning out almost immediately, focusing with unseeing eyes on a piece of parsley sticking to the edge of the bowl with the remains of the scrambled eggs.

"Shall we go back to bed?" Lex asked after a five-minute silence that might easily have continued for another hour or two. "To sleep?" he added, even though he didn't really have to.

She smiled; even her mouth felt slow. "That sounds like an excellent idea."

He nodded, got up, waited until she'd risen from her chair as well and preceded her to the door, waited there again until she'd caught up with him, then went up the stairs and waited until she'd climbed the stairs as well. Chloe doubted he was aware of the fact that he was behaving as if she were a dog he wasn't certain that would follow; it was rather subtle and if she hadn't been so hyper alert she probably wouldn't have noticed it herself. But he did. He kept looking back as if he were afraid she'd slip away otherwise.

This, this neediness, was probably the only form of apology she was going to get. That was ok, though. If she thought about it she thought it might even be better than an apology. An 'I beg your pardon' was only words, after all; words could be faked and knowing Lex he WOULD fake them. He wasn't sorry. He had thought he was trying to protect her—or himself. Or both. And maybe he had been right. She hadn't had the chance to really think about the things he had told her the night before, but even though Edge had been wrong on several occasions, Lex had still told her enough to made her head spin.

Seventeen dead.

Good god. Seventeen people whose deaths had been covered up, lied about, needless or senseless.

And still she couldn't hate him. On the contrary, she didn't think she'd ever loved him more, even if it did hurt a little. _The thing that redeems Lex_, she thought, _is what condemns him at the same time. He never gives up. He keeps going. No matter what happens, he cannot be humbled or defeated—except by himself. I don't know what he did_

_yesterday. I think he's a bit dazed, just like me. He LOOKS dazed._ She decided she didn't like the dazed look, and hopped up the last few steps to precede him.

The bed was remade. She experienced a short moment of embarrassment on behalf of the person who had cleaned away the sweat and blood-soaked sheets, but Lex was already moving towards the bed, shedding clothes like a snake its skin as he went. By the time he'd arrived at the edge of the bed he was only wearing his boxer shorts, and he crawled under the duvet with the single-mindedness of a burrowing hamster. When he surfaced again he stretched out his arm towards her in a silent gesture for her to join him.

She hesitated another second—she couldn't afford to miss the meeting with Hope this afternoon—then nodded at herself, set the alarm for a quarter to one, stripped down to her panties and settled down beneath the covers in the crook of his arm. Lex made a satisfied sound, nestled closer against her and closed his eyes. She half expected him to be hard again; you could say a lot about Lex Luthor but if there was one thing he wasn't, it was impotent, but he really didn't seem to have any other objective than to fall asleep again. Which he commenced to do straight away judging by the slow rise and fall of his chest.

"Lex?" Chloe asked, turning her head to look at him.

"Mm?"

"Are you feeling alright?"

"Yes?"

"I mean really? You're sure your head doesn't hurt?"

"Why would my head hurt? I'm fine."

"Yes, but are you REALLY fine?"

A fine hint of irritation crept into Lex's voice. "Yes, Chloe," he drawled, "I'm REALLY fine. Didn't I tell you I wouldn't lie to you? I'm fine. I'm just tired. Aren't you?"

"Yes, but..."

"Go to sleep."

"It's just that you never sleep for more than five or six hours and now you're suddenly craving it like a tsetse fly."

"Tsetse flies actually don't need to sleep."

"You know very well what I mean."

"I do. You're comparing me to a fly."

"Lex!"

"I had a stressing week, alright? I didn't sleep much. Neither did I get the chance to catch up on it yesterday." He fell silent for a few seconds, then added, "I do not, repeat NOT, have a concussion, if that's what you're thinking. I'm just tired. So be quiet and go to sleep. You need your rest, too, if you want to do something useful for your paper today."

"Yessir."

"Sssh."

Chloe sighed, then smiled and closed her eyes again, curling her arm over Lex's chest. He picked it up and laid it back down lower, on his stomach. She frowned, remembering his reaction when she had put her hand on his chest after he'd woken up from his nightmare.

"Lex?"

"Mmm?"

"Are you going to tell me what you were dreaming about, yesterday?"

"What dream?" Lex asked sleepily.

"The one you woke up from in a total panic. The one that wasn't about Edge."

"Luthors don't panic," Lex murmured, sounding even sleepier. He buried his face in her hair.

"Don't try to avoid the subject."

"I'm not avoiding the subject. I'm just not willing to tell you."

Chloe attempted to sit up and berate him about the fact that they'd just had a near to-the-death fight about him keeping things back, but he had her neatly pinned down and after a few seconds of useless struggle she gave up and just glared. Lex, eyes closed, was blissfully unaware. Or maybe not; there was a thin line between his eyebrows. It caused a curve in the scab on his forehead, and Chloe absentmindedly agreed that indeed, it did look a little bit like a horse's head.

"The fact that promised I wouldn't lie to you does not give you the right to demand I divulge every single experience I've ever had," Lex said gently, distracting her from his scar. "There are a lot of things I don't want to think about. I've been kidnapped before. I've been shot before. I've even been tortured. I've witnessed manslaughter, murder and cannibalism. Believe me, my subconscious has the equivalent of the IMDB to browse when it comes to generating nightmares. That's all they are, nightmares. And I don't want to talk about them. What I want to do is forget about them and go back to sleep." He opened his eyes. "Can you live with that?"

Chloe nodded, slowly. "But…this isn't about me prying into your private life. This is me being worried about you. You were seriously freaking out."

Lex shrugged. He closed his eyes again. "I never want to see another golden monkey in my entire life."

Chloe winced. Right, the monkeys. Yes, she'd have nightmares about that, too. She stroked Lex's stomach with her hand and he picked it up and kissed it before putting it back just above the waistband of his boxers.

"I'm glad you're back," he murmured.

"Yes," she murmured back. "Me too."

TBC

Only one chapter to go now…


	34. Chapter 34

Only one chapter to go now…

Only one chapter to go now…

Ok, I lied again. This is not the last chapter. I just need more space to tie up all the ends and I can't do it within 30 pages, so I'll post double. Also, I need more time. So this chapter isn't all that long, and nothing really happens, and I've used emails, which is an incredibly lazy way of writing…but still, it is a chapter of sorts.

I'm afraid that there are a few things I won't be able to put in. You'll find out which at the very end of the story. Don't let that keep you back from asking, because I've just very cleverly bought myself another week of writing time!

On! Let's make it a nice even 35 chapters!

Thirty-four: In which many conversations are had

Chloe woke up exactly one minute before the alarm would have gone off, and turned it off so it wouldn't wake Lex up. She was somewhat surprised he hadn't woken up when she sat up, but he hadn't; he had tried to spread out all over the bed, but all he'd managed in the last few hours was to turn onto his stomach and more or less pin her to the mattress. As she removed his arm from her back, he murmured something, but he didn't open his eyes until she had almost finished dressing.

"Where are you going?" he asked groggily, rubbing his face with slow, heavy movements.

_The guy was seriously exhausted. _"I've got a meet'n'greet with someone at four in Metropolis," she said, and buttoned up her blouse. "Some of us have to work for a living, you know."

"I have to work for a living too," Lex protested. "I just took the day off."

"I can't do that. I need to interview a little ex-felon called Hope."

"Good name of an ex-felon."

"Absolutely. But me buzzing off to work doesn't mean you need to get out, too. Why don't you go back to sleep?"

"I probably will," Lex muttered. His head snapped up. "When will you come back?"

Chloe snorted. "I won't. Are you nuts? Do you know how long it takes me to get here? I'm not driving out here anytime soon again. No, you're coming back to Metropolis, that sounds like a much better idea." She regarded the man sitting swaying with sleep-drunkenness in his bed. "Although it might be a good idea not to do that today. Tomorrow? Or maybe you should let someone drive you."

Lex managed a look both scathing and sleepy, making her giggle. She kneeled (with difficultly because she was stiff all over) on the edge of the bed and kissed him just above the now almost faded bruise. "Go back to sleep. I'll call you tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" Lex repeated.

"Or I'll mail you."

"Tomorrow?"

"Well, I could mail you tonight, after the interview…" She looked at her knees. "I need some time off, Lex. To think this over."

Lex froze, she could feel it even though she wasn't touching him. "I hurt you," he began, ready to take all the blame and revel in self-torture, but she shook her head.

"No, that's not it. I mean, yeah, you did, a little, but that's not the reason I need a few days to…well, to think." She looked up, found his face completely devoid of emotion, and nearly devoid of color.

"Of course, I understand," he said, sounding understanding and clearly not getting it at all.

"No," she said sharply, "I don't think you do. You think I'm running away. You think I'm still considering publishing my baby."

"I don't…"

"Yes, you do. I'm not running away, and I'm not publishing either. I just need a break. Two, three days, figure things out. Can you live with that?" Having his own words from the previous night repeated back at him pretty much stopped any further protests. He nodded. Chloe kissed him again. He still didn't understand and she was sorry for him because he didn't, but hell, she needed a few days to get back to her feet. And, indeed, to heal. She wasn't looking forward to the drive back.

"Go back to sleep. I'll mail you tonight."

"I'll call you," Lex said stubbornly.

She shrugged. "If you want to."

"I do. Drive carefully. And ask James to get you something to eat. Wait, I'll…"

Chloe pushed him back down. "I'll manage. You know what, I'll call you after my interview. And now I have to go or I'll be late after all." She made to get up but Lex put his hand on her shoulder, stopping her.

"Chloe…" He stopped. She put her hand over his and squeezed.

"We're good. Just give me a bit of time to recuperate."

"I'm sorry."

"I know. It's ok. I love you."

He winced, looked away, studied the crinkles the duvet made over his knees, then faced her again. "Me too."

"Best not tempt fate again, huh?" Chloe said perceptively. She resisted the urge to caress his beautiful bald head, instead pushed herself to her feet and felt around for her shoes. "I really have to go. No, don't bother getting up. Go sleep some more, you look like you need it. I'll speak to you tonight."

"Ok," said Lex.

He waited until she had left the room and then lay down, meaning to drowse for a few more minutes, but the moment he closed his eyes Morpheus clutched him tight to his velvet-covered chest and did not release him until it was well into the afternoon.

James just floated out of a room when she came tottering down the stairs on wobbly legs. He was carrying a stack of newspapers, and Chloe thought that if she would ask him what he was doing he'd have a perfectly acceptable excuse for leaving a room at the very moment she stumbled into the hallway—but she had the idea Lex's butler may be even sneakier than any Luthor.

"Good afternoon, Miss," he said, waiting until her feet touched the carpet. "You'll be getting up, then?"

"I am," she said, hiding her hands in her sleeves. "Lex isn't. I have a thing to ask."

"Of course, Miss."

"If he hasn't waken up at four, I'd like you to call a doctor."

The older man's face remained impassive, but his mouth tightened. "Won't he wake up?"

"Oh yes, he'll wake up, but he's gone back to sleep and I'm not sure I'm comfortable with him sleeping for over six hours and still need more. Anyway, I'm sure it's nothing. As for me, I'm leaving for Metropolis. Work." She sighed.

James nodded. "Won't you be having lunch first, Miss Sullivan?"

"Could you please call me Chloe? You make me feel over forty."

James grinned, and there was that dramatic transformation from 'elderly gent' to 'sweet gramps' again. "Of course."

"I don't have time for lunch. But Lex said you might whip up some sandwiches for me?"

"Naturally!" He hesitated. "Do you want to wait here in the hall, or in the sitting room, or follow me to the kitchen…?"

"I'll come along," Chloe said. The moment she walked into the kitchen, she knew she'd been played. One woman sat at the kitchen table, sipping coffee from a huge mug. Another was cutting the bread crusts off a number of square sandwiches. When they discovered her behind James' perfectly laundered and pressed form, both women scanned her with anxious eyes—the kind of anxious, she gathered, you might become after changing the young master's blood-stained bedding.

Her cheeks grew hot. She wished she'd put on some make-up before going down.

"Good afternoon, Miss," both cook and cleaning lady said, their eyes roving over her as if searching for dripping bandages.

"Good afternoon," she replied chirpily. "Ooh. That smells heavenly. Can I have…" James held out a mug to her. He must be psychic. "Thanks."

"Cream and two spoons of sugar."

"You're my hero." She closed her eyes and inhaled the fragrant steam drifting up from the dark gold.

"Are you quite alright, Miss?" the woman at the table asked shyly. Afraid to pry, Chloe thought, but even more afraid the young master had decided to start beating up innocent women instead of his furniture.

"I'm peachy," Chloe said, slurping the coffee with little regard to decorum. "He's worse off than me. The blood was his, not mine." She looked up. Three pairs of eyes regarded her with a mixture of scandal, well-hidden curiosity and an open need for gossip. _Yup. I had violent sex with your employer, bit him, scratched open his back and most likely concussed him with a right hook. In return, he fucked me raw and changed my heart into pudding._ "We're both fine," was what she said. "I'd have liked to stay but I need to interview someone at four." Her eyes strayed to the clock hanging over the door. "I'd better leave." She took another gulp of coffee, loath to leave it unfinished.

The cook quickly wrapped five crust-less sandwiches into tin foil. "I have your road rations ready, Miss. I hope you like salmon-cucumber, BLT, egg and cream, ham and cheese and tuna salad?"

Chloe grinned. "I'd be ungrateful not to. It sounds lovely, thanks a lot. Aargh. I've gotta run now! Oh, James, is Lex's phone back? I don't think I have his old number."

"It has returned," James nodded. "I will hand it over to him today." The curiosity was still there, but the anxiety was gone. Good. The cook handed Chloe her sandwiches and a plastic bottle of Innocent Smoothie. James disappeared and returned with her coat, helped her into it. One minute later she folded herself into the front seat of her little Honda, waved at the charming butler, and drove off, smiling.

When Chloe hurried into the cafe where she was supposed to meet Hope of the self-mutilation and the armed robbery at 14, she felt a confusing stab of relief and annoyance to find that her interviewee hadn't arrived yet. She was exactly three minutes early, which

actually made her late, and she had expected Hope to sit at a table with neck-stretching eagerness to spill her story and become famous. The fact that she wasn't there grated on Chloe, even as she grasped at the extra time with both hands and ran into the bathroom to put on some make-up and smooth down what was left of her bed hair.

She was looking a bit better now than she had this morning: the shadows under her eyes were more or less gone, her mouth was no longer puffy and her eyes were clear, but she was still pale and to add to that, she now walked like someone sixty years her elder. Three hours in the car hadn't improved her stiffness. Most of it was just sore muscles—they never showed that in porn movies either, the wanton slut the day after her roll in the hay with Mister Hung like a Bull with the Neanderthal Jaw and the Firm Grip. She should be lucky Lex wasn't hung like a bull or she'd probably be in Intensive Care right now. He was more than capable of inflicting internal bruising with his equipment, thank you very much. As for a firm grip, the finger prints on her wrists were now discoloring to a cheerful purple. It was a good thing it was winter and she could wear long sleeves and gloves, otherwise she'd have to wear bracelets up to her elbows to cover up these marks.

But it was winter, and people were generally pale. Some mascara and a bit of eye shadow served to make her look less tired, and a tiny bit of cleverly applied lipstick brought a hint of color to her cheeks. She lamented the fact that she hadn't brought rouge. On the other

hand, that might have made her look like someone with a raging fever. One always had to be very careful applying rouge.

After putting on her media face she did her necessaries (ow) and regarded herself again when she came out of the booth. Haggard but classy. She would do.

When she exited the toilet, Hope, recognizable from the picture Perry had provided her with, was sitting at a table in the corner. Chloe dragged her fingers through her hair, drew her sleeves down over her hands and walked up to her.

"Hi. You must be Hope Munroe? I'm Chloe Sullivan." She showed the girl her press card. Blue-gray eyes studied it with little interest.

"Yeah, I'm Hope," the girl said, and offered a limp hand. Chloe instantly disliked her. Troubled teenager or not, there was something about Hope she couldn't stand, and it wasn't just her limp handshake.

She was fake, that was it. She was white, as blond as can be, actually, and had a healthy, plump look about her, but she had done everything to look like a starving black sister: her blonde hair was twisted into a hundred tiny braids, she wore a hoodie, low wide pants and scuffed sneakers. She spoke with the drawl of the Metropolis gangs.

"Niceta meetcha, Missullivan."

"Chloe. Please."

"Awrigh'."

"What can I get you? Coffee? Something cold?"

"Coffee'd be cool. Cappuccino."

Chloe went and got coffee, then asked Hope to tell her something about herself.

"Didn' yo get my record?" Hope drawled. "My biography? I spen' AGES describin' all my sins an' vices."

Chloe had. She'd skimmed it briefly before driving to Smallville. The only thing she remembered was that the girl had been born of reasonably well-to-do parents and had lost a younger sister in a car accident when she was ten and the sister five. She guessed that would mess up any kid, but it didn't explain the girl's desire to come over as white trash (or maybe black trash) while she was obviously wasn't. What Chloe found even more annoying was her accent, which was pure street, but her choice of words was sophisticated at times, when she forgot she was supposed to be a gutter rebel.

"I did. I just thought we might get acquainted a little better if we talked. If you want, I can tell you something about myself, if you don't want to, you know, open your heart at the first date." Studying Hope's face, Chloe decided she had found the right manner of address. The obstinate expression left the girl's eyes, and while she still wasn't exactly smiling, her mouth relaxed. She nodded.

"Yeah. Who's Chloe Sullivan? I read some o' yo' stuff, y'know. The Tuesday column."

"You have?" Chloe said, throwing in a hasty grin to make her astonishment appear to be delight so as not to insult her subject within the first five minutes of the interview. Her column wasn't exactly the stuff of legends but it wasn't your basic no-brain chick-lit either. Sometimes she waxed philosophical about politics or women issues and Hope, with her personality issues, didn't seem the type to enjoy such writing.

Hope may be a lot of things but she wasn't stupid. She grinned wryly. "We were advised to read the paper at th' institution," she said, picking up her mug of cappuccino and showing ten fingers with short but perfectly manicured black-lacquered fingernails. "I kinda liked it. Better than the Friday column. That man's just fulla shit."

"Glad to hear it," Chloe said, concurring. She reached for the sugar, and Hope's eyes widened. She stared at Chloe with her mouth open, and of course she'd seen the bruises on her wrists. _Note to self: wear a sweater with longer sleeves tomorrow._ Chloe calmly picked up the sugar and added a healthy amount to her café choco.

"I lead an interesting life," she said, primly covering up the bruises again.

Hope surprised her by bursting out in very girlish, very honest laughter. "Sister," she said, "you the one who needs someone to talk to and give innerviews, not me!"

"I'm afraid my interview would be a heck of a lot less exciting than anything that happened in your life." Well, not likely. Chloe's life had been pretty exciting in Smallville, and even here in Metropolis, with her nine-to-five job, she wasn't complaining about being bored. And as for the reason of her bruises…If anyone else but Lex had caused those, it would be a subject of gossip, no more. Since it WAS Lex…Katie Johansson would cut off her boobs and hand them to Chloe on a China platter for a few pictures of her wrists and thighs, Lex's back, and an interview of what had gone down the last evening.

"Your boyfriend treat you bad?"

"No," Chloe said. She smiled, glad she wasn't lying. "If he'd do that, I'd cut off his balls and feed them to my neighbor's cat."

Hope grinned. Chloe grinned back. And just like that they'd bonded. And just like that, the interview started.

When James rapped the door at precisely four o' clock, Lex woke up immediately. He'd been slumbering fitfully for some time, unwilling to wake up and unable to sleep more deeply; when his butler entered his brain jumped at the opportunity to kick his body into gear.

"Good afternoon, Sir," James said with an appraising glance at his employee.

"Afternoon!" Lex returned brightly. He was awake, truly awake for the first time since he'd woken up twice earlier. As he sat up the muscles of his back and thighs twinged, but his head was clear and when he probed his forehead, all he felt was the roughness of a vaguely horse-shaped scab.

Telling the truth was exhausting. He hadn't even known how trying it had been until he looked back on it. No wonder it had worn him out. He glanced at his alarm clock and clacked his tongue. James raised his eyebrows in a silent query.

Yes, my master. You've been dead to the world for most of this day. What now?

"James, do you have my phone?" He held out his hand, expecting to have it slapped into his palm like a surgeon requesting a certain size of scalpel. James did not disappoint him.

"Yes sir. Here you are, Sir."

"Thank you." He checked it quickly and found several text messages, missed calls and voice mails. "Did you serve Chloe lunch before she left?"

"No, sir. She requested road rations. Mrs. Smith made her sandwiches."

"Good. How did she appear to you? Chloe, I mean?"

The reason he adored James was because James always understood the weird loops op Lex's mind. "She appeared somewhat tired, but she was energetic and seemed to be of a positive state of mind."

"Good." He got out of bed, made sure James got a good look at his back so he could relay the cause of the bloody sheets to the ladies downstairs so they had something to gossip about while he was gone, and dressed quickly in the clothes he'd discarded earlier that day. "Any messages?"

"None to the house, sir."

"Right." He picked up the phone again. "I would like a cup of coffee and a sandwich and then I'm going over to the plant. I'll be back at six at the latest, and expect dinner to be ready at six-thirty."

"Yes sir."

"I will be leaving for Metropolis tomorrow morning. Has the Ferrari been repaired yet?"

"No, sir."

"Why not?"

"The garage had to order the paint from elsewhere."

"Did you get me a complaint form?"

"Yes, sir. It's on your desk in the sitting room."

"Excellent." He bounced on the balls of his feet, staring out of the window with his hands in his pockets. It was as if he'd lost fifty pounds; he felt so light he could float to the ceiling. "Anything else?"

"No, sir."

"Great. Coffee and sandwiches. I'll be down in a minute."

James left, and Lex sat down on his bed to browse through the digital screams for attention left on his cell. He listened to Chloe's messages with a big smile on his face. He still felt guilty for treating her so roughly—but damn, he'd been ANGRY. He had never in his entire life been forced to expose himself so absolutely, to ANALYZE himself so thoroughly, and seeing himself the way Chloe had to be seeing him had shaken him, badly. Chloe telling him that she accepted him had only made him feel worse. Of course, after he'd pushed her down, manhandled and raped her, and she still hadn't fled away from him, he believed that she really did love him (apart from just accepting him), but when he was lying next to her in the dark, it was as if the rage he had so hard tried to repress was swelling inside his head until it was going to press the seams of his skull apart.

Who was she to accept him?

What gave her the right to put him through this hell and then come by like some kind of twisted priest and claim she could absolve him?

If she loved him, like she claimed she did, how could she, how COULD she betray him so completely and then accuse HIM of keeping secrets?

How could she strip everything he was away from him and then expect him to cope? And how the FUCK could she think he'd be GRATEFUL for that? Did she really think that sharing all his failures, his deadly mistakes, made him feel better? Didn't she know about the shame, the horror, the self-loathing that came with remembering mistakes that didn't only hurt his pride but _people_ and didn't only hurt but even _killed_ them?

Lex had never been sorry for his experiments. He felt guilty when people got hurt because of something he had done, but that never stopped him from trying, even if he knew there WOULD be casualties. She was right in that aspect, when she said he did things because he wanted to do them, not because they would make him richer or bring him fame. If he saw an opportunity, he took it, and that was the truth. He was very good at lying and posing, but revealing all those things, which had felt like a vomiting spell that lasted a full three hours, had revealed something to himself as well. He might be good at fooling other people, but he was even better at fooling himself.

Chloe had found out he'd been fooling her, and her reaction was to strip him bare and then tell him she accepted him that way.

She basically told him that no matter what he did, she accepted him for what he was beneath the mirror he held up to everyone else.

It was forgiveness of a kind that was mind-boggling.

It was also, he had thought as he listened to the rage seep through the seams of his skull, the most sanctimonious action anyone had ever taken against him. How could she, this woman whom he had told he loved, whom he had never hurt, and had vowed to protect until he died even if she were the one to inflict the lethal wound, simply because he couldn't bear to live in a world that did not have her in it…how could she claim to understand him, know him, and forgive him if there was nothing to forgive?

How could she lie next to him and believe that everything would be alright?

Edge had had a friend whose wife had died because of Lex. Edge was obsessed with his crusade to bring Lex down as an enemy of the law and his lifelong opponent. Chloe had taken over from Edge and she was Lex's FUCKING GIRLFRIEND. The girl he loved. The girl who now claimed the only reason she wouldn't throw him in jail was because she loved him too.

Because she understood him.

Forgave him.

Knew him.

And after that month of truly spectacular misfortune, which included getting the flu, then being shot, coughing up his lungs, being restrained and raped by an alien and getting poisoned by said alien's pheromones, and finally crashing his car; being told that she forgave him for keeping secrets after she almost destroyed him, because she thought she _knew_ him…that made him snap.

She had just told him that everything he was, was despicable but she forgave him because she UNDERSTOOD.

He wanted her back, that was never an issue. He had never stopped wanting her, not even when he had cursed her name and messed up his furniture. He wanted her even more now she was less than a yard away, but it was an destructive kind of want that made both his head and his heart pound with a sick pain that pulsed red in front of his eyes.

More like a need, really; the need to make her pay for what she'd done to him, to confront her with the worst he could be—to see if she would still be so understanding if he did something to HER, instead of to people she had never met and wouldn't have cared about if she hadn't been set on bringing him down.

So he had raped her.

That really was the only way to describe it. Using your superior force to hold a woman down in order to penetrate her was rape.

And guess what, she was still understanding. She actually dared him to do his worst. Well, his worst was rape, and she'd given back as good as she had gotten. Hell, she'd even dared him to up the ante. His back no longer hurt but he could still feel the pull of recently closed scrapes. And she still said she loved him.

Lex had described acts that surely had to render him a monster in her eyes, and she said she understood him.

Then he'd did his utmost to show her that beneath all those layers she claimed he had he was every bit the monster she must think he was, and she said she loved all of him, including the nasty parts.

And then his mind declared it had taken enough and went into a full pain-revolt on his poor, abused head (thank you, Clark, for that INSPIRING nightmare), and she'd been sweet, considerate and caring, and god, what else could he do but lay down at her feet and ask her to please put on her high heels and walk up and down over him some more?

He'd been pretty much her doormat since he'd watched her chew shaved ice and sip water after both taking and dealing out even more sexual punishment, all the while staring at him over the rim of her glass with that intense, considering look in her eyes—_Had enough, Lex? Wanna go for another round, Lex? I can take everything you throw at me, Lex, so if you're good to go, so am I._ But after having his head pulled down on her breast and cuddled like a child he really saw a future in painting 'WELCOME' on his chest and lying in front of Miss Sullivan's door so she could wipe her dainty feet on his six hundred dollar suit.

He snorted a laugh at himself. _Nah. Face it. You were her doormat from the moment she threatened to bite off your dick if you wouldn't continue raping her. Ok, violent, mean, raping doormat, but…come on! If there was ever a woman I can't pollute to the extent that she wants to kill me, it's her._

_I need to hold on to that._

He checked the time again. _If she hasn't called by six I'm going to call her. What did Clark say? Pink roses and chocolate? Right. _He shouldn't come across too besotted, but he should also make sure that she didn't change her mind. So…fifty roses and a pound of chocolate? Or should he leave the chocolates until tomorrow?

The front man of the shit plant had left no less than seven messages, each a little more panicky than the previous one. Of course those were yesterday's calls, but he needed to find out what the status of his cat-exploded machines was anyway, so he'd better get off his love-struck butt and start leading his company.

While he chewed his sandwich he thought of something witty to put on the card with the roses. 'Yours, Lex' might not do. 'Don't let 'em die' wasn't all that charming either. 'With love' was an expression he abhorred, and 'Love and kisses' wasn't him. 'Thank you' would not get his meaning across either, since he wasn't exactly grateful for her actions, even if he was grateful for the fact that he definitely hadn't lost her. Of course there was always poetry, but while he would shamelessly quote Tennyson, Herrick or Shakespeare to other women, he didn't want to borrow other people's words to tell Chloe he was now her doormat.

"A doormat is a doormat is a doormat," he mused aloud, twisting Gertrude Stein's famous words out of context. Then a sunny smile broadened his mouth and he reached for the land line phone as he swallowed his last bite of bread. Chocolate it would be. Recuperation fare. He made his phone call and left for the plant.

"Hey Lex."

"Chloe! Hold on a moment, will you?" Clattering noises in the background, Lex's voice speaking 'Don't lose that thing, I want it taken to the lab to see how strong the current was that passed through it. No. No, I'm off.' "Right, here I am again. How was your interview?"

"Interesting. Weird girl, but quite funny. Thanks for the flowers and the chocolate, by the way. Fascinating note, I'll be sure to remember that."

"Ah, so you're home already?"

"Yeah, just a couple of minutes ago. My neighbor dragged me out to show me the flowers—they're really gorgeous. I'm cooking. And I'm afraid my self-restraint just ran out and I'm going to sample your chocolates."

"Don't eat them all in one go. You'll get sick. And fat."

"Bye Lex…

"Lex?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you driving?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you have a handless set?"

"Of course I do. Silly girl."

"And are you actually using it?"

"Yes, Chloe, I am. Look, no hands!"

"Sorry. Just trying to save your poor head from another meeting with the steering wheel. How's the horse?"

"I think the scab just fell off."

"Eew."

"Do you want me to save it for you?"

"EEEwww!"

"You could have it put behind glass and hang it over your TV."

"That's disgusting."

"You should see my back."

"Huh."

"…How are you? I mean, really, how are you?"

"I'm stiff like a corpse. And sore as hell. But I'm good. The memory of your back fills me with warm fuzzy feelings. These chocolates are REALLY nice. Are you driving back to Metropolis or to the Mansion?"

"To the Mansion. I'll leave for Metropolis tomorrow morning. And then on to New York for another senseless meeting with the yo-yos of the board."

"Sounds great."

"I can hardly wait to get there. Although I must say I'll be glad to leave Smallville."

"When will you be back? From New York, I mean?"

"Thursday morning."

"Ok."

"Why?"

"Nothing."

"…"

"Are you still there?"

"Yes. I'm almost back at the Mansion."

"Say hello to your delightful staff from me. They were so sweet when I left. You know, I got the impression they were really afraid you'd beaten me up. Did you ever do that in the past?"

"Not really. I don't usually hurt women. Apart from that dead girl I once woke up next to…"

"…Sorry. That was insensitive of me."

"I showed James my back. They know who the real assailant was. Believe me, they've elevated you to the status of sainthood by now. 'The Lady with the Nails'. That's what they've dubbed you."

"…I can never return to Smallville again."

"No. Sorry."

"Still, tell them I said hi, will you?"

"Sure."

"Lex, I gotta go, my pasta's boiling over."

"That brings back memories."

"Down boy. When I'm able to sit in a wooden chair again, you can make me pasta again. I'll even let you—Oh my god, gotta go Lex, gotta go!!" click

"Spaghetti, one. Chloe, zero. Goodnight, Chloe." click

Wed. 15 January 2008 13:23 PM

From:

To: encoded

_Hey Lex!_

_How are you? Is New York absolute hell or is it better than expected?_

_The weirdest thing just happened to me. I'd gone out for lunch with Clark and Lois—what on earth did you and Clark do that made him turn around like that? Did you two fight again? He keeps asking if you're alright. I told him you were, only that you crashed your car again. To that he nodded sagely and went back to his coffee, rolling his eyes but satisfied. _

_Anyway, Clark zipped off in typical Clark fashion after lunch, and Lois went on to some opening, so I returned on my own, and guess who bumped into me just as I opened the door of the DP?_

_No one but your very own Lucifer. _

_I swear to god he'd been hiding and waiting to pounce on me behind the holly bush next to the entrance; he just appeared out of nowhere with that creepy 'I know what you did last summer' smile he sometimes has, and started grilling me about our meeting in Smallville._

_I'm really sorry, Lex. He almost drove me off the road last Monday. I thought he hadn't noticed me, but apparently he had, and he was being all protective of you, or maybe I should call that possessive, and accusing me of being after your money (which I am, of course. I care nothing for you, I just want your money.) Of course I told him to mind his own business and pushed open the door so I could go inside past the badge scanner. Only then he saw my wrist. Not to make you feel guilty, Lex, but it looks as if Lassie dragged me out of a ravine by the arms and went on gnawing for a bit for the fun of it. It doesn't hurt much anymore, but it looks seriously impressive._

_I've been wearing extra long-sleeved tops and gloves, but my coat's kinda tight-fitting and it pulled up everything and exposed those bruises to art house perfection. _

_I swear L. almost got a heart attack. He snatched my hand from the handle, stripped off my glove, pulled up my sleeve and panted, "How did you get this?"_

_And he KNEW, Lex. Either he recognizes hold-me-down fingerprints on someone's arm, or he is even more perceptive than I thought he was. Have you checked your bedroom for hidden bugs, lately? Investigated the background of your staff? Not that I think they have anything to do with this, but still…he KNEW._

_I told him I'd bumped into a door, but I don't think he bought it :). And then he __**apologized**__. Not in so many words, but he became slick and charming and sympathetic, told me he was sorry I'd 'bumped into a door' which, I got the idea, in his language roughly translates as 'was given a trashing by my no-good son', told me that I shouldn't let doors swing back like that, and a whole lot more of such dreadful ambiguous talk. Then he remembered he had an appointment elsewhere and skipped off._

_I'm afraid I messed up with L._

_So sorry, Lex. Please tell me he didn't come over and engaged you in another one of those dreadful soul-crushing verbal battles of yours. _

_Anyway…give me a call when you get back, ok? Or mail me._

_See you!_

_Love, Chloe._

Wed. 15 January 2008 23:45 PM

From: encoded

To: 

_Hello Chloe,_

_ How are you? Is New York absolute hell or is it better than expected?_

_New York itself is bustling and busy as usual; however, the meeting made me wish for wasabi and an eye dropper or a straw. It would have been less painful snorting wasabi than listening to the drivel of these people. I don't even know what I was there for. On the other hand, the board didn't seem to know that either, and the result was that they were highly nervous and respectful. The master's eye, and all that. So it's hell, but hell isn't as bad as I feared._

_ The weirdest thing just happened to me. I'd gone out for lunch with Clark and Lois_

_That's very uncommon, indeed._

_ I swear to god he'd been hiding and waiting to pounce on me behind the holly bush _

_ next to the entrance; he just appeared out of nowhere with that creepy 'I know what _

_ you did last summer' smile he sometimes has, and started grilling me about our_

_ meeting in Smallville._

_I can actually confirm to you that Dad is not above hiding himself in shrubbery if he wants to catch someone unawares. He used to practice in the garden when I was a toddler. It was a game. We used to call it 'Spot Daddy'. I always used to think it was some elaborate kind of hide and seek, but it was actually practice to sneak up on people from behind the begonia without getting your shoes muddy. _

_ I care nothing for you, I just want your money.) _

_That's ok. I'm only after your body. It's a fair trade._

_ Of course I told him to mind his own business and pushed open the door so I could go inside past the badge scanner. Only then he saw my wrist. Not to make you feel guilty, Lex, but it looks as if Lassie dragged me out of a ravine by the arms and went on _

_ gnawing for a bit for the fun of it. It doesn't hurt much anymore, but it looks seriously impressive._

_Chloe, to hell with my feelings of guilt! Have you seen a doctor? It wasn't this bad last Tuesday, was it? Is this normal? I mean, of course it isn't normal, but are bruises supposed to last this long? Mine usually fade away after ten hours or so, unless they're very bad, and it's been over two days now. Are you sure I didn't strain your wrists? Are they swollen? Can you move your hands freely? I really am very, very sorry about this. It won't happen again, I swear._

_ And he KNEW, Lex. Either he recognizes hold-me-down fingerprints on someone's _

_ arm, or he is even more perceptive than I thought he was. Have you checked your _

_ bedroom for hidden bugs, lately? Investigated the background of your staff? Not that I think they have anything to do with this, but still…he KNEW._

_Dad recognizes those kind of bruises. He should, in any case. I don't think any of my staff has been reporting to him. They're quite loyal to me. He's just very good at connecting things; like me telling him I didn't have a relationship with you, you coming over to the Mansion that very evening and having my fingerprints all over you the next day. For which I am most sincerely regretful. Have I mentioned that yet? I am. _

_ I told him I'd bumped into a door, but I don't think he bought it :). _

_You think? :)_

_ And then he __**apologized**__. _

_Dad prefers the family name to be connected only to dirty deals and business frauds. Assault on females is unpleasant. What if you'd decided to sue? Well, that isn't entirely fair to my father, either. He has a high regard for women. You might not believe it, but so do I. You don't hurt women. It's barbaric. My dad shouldn't have had to apologize, I should. Did I? I can't remember. If I haven't yet, I apologize for that._

_ I'm afraid I messed up with L._

_I think you handled him really well. The door-thing was a very good one. Thanks for letting me know, though. Now I can think of something to say when he'll confront me with my barbaric ways. Which he will. I just don't know when yet._

_I'm flying tomorrow morning at five A.M. What are your plans for tomorrow? Or maybe today, since you're probably already asleep. If that happens to be the case, and you read this in the morning: Good Morning. If you're still up, Good Night._

_Lex _

Thurs. 16 January 2008 00:07 PM

From: 

To: encoded

_Hey Lex,_

_Just a quick reply before going to bed. Yeah, I was still up. How thoughtful of you to send it to my private address :)_

_ New York itself is bustling and busy as usual; however, the meeting made me wish for wasabi and an eye dropper or a straw. It would have been less painful snorting _

_ wasabi than listening to the drivel of these people. _

_Poor baby._

_ The weirdest thing just happened to me. I'd gone out for lunch with Clark and Lois_

_ That's very uncommon, indeed._

_You with the sarcasm, you!_

_ I can actually confirm to you that Dad is not above hiding himself in shrubbery if he _

_ wants to catch someone unawares. He used to practice in the garden when I was a _

_ toddler. It was a game. We used to call it 'Spot Daddy'. I always used to think it was _

_ some elaborate kind of hide and seek, but it was actually practice to sneak up on _

_ people from behind the begonia without getting your shoes muddy. _

_I would SO have loved to have been a fly on the wall. Or the tree. Or ANYWHERE in that garden!_

_ I care nothing for you, I just want your money.) _

_ That's ok. I'm only after your body. It's a fair trade._

_I thought you usually went for tall, thin brunettes?_

_ Chloe, to hell with my feelings of guilt! Have you yada yada yada self-flagellation blah blah blah I really am very, very sorry about this. It won't happen again, I swear._

_Sorry, I edited your speech a little. You're forgiven, Lex. Chill._

_ Dad recognizes those kind of bruises. He should, in any case. _

_snip! Eh, Lex, why should he recognize pinning bruises? Is there something you're not telling me again? _

_ For which I am most sincerely regretful. Have I mentioned that yet? _

_Only about fifty-two times, now. You're so cute when you're being meek. Wait, let me add a picture. It was discretely placed underneath my coffee cup this morning. I'm not ENTIRELY sure who drew it, but I think I look quite fetching in those high heeled boots, and I like how you seem to actually lick that whip._

_ I told him I'd bumped into a door, but I don't think he bought it :). _

_ You think? :)_

_But it was such a convincing excuse!_

_ And then he __**apologized**__. _

_ It's barbaric. My dad shouldn't have had to apologize, I should. Did I? I can't _

_ remember. If I haven't yet, I apologize for that._

_Fifty-three…Seriously, Lex, it's ok. How's that back of yours doing?_

_I really hope I haven't gotten you into trouble with L. Five, huh. That's…horrifically early. Me, I'm all about town. First another interview with Hope, and then I have to go to Grandville for the introduction of a new kind of fertilizer aircraft. Joy. I'm free on Friday, though. Anyway, I'm off to bed, now. _

_Unless you reply really quick. Then I'm still up. If you're already asleep by now, sleep tight and have a good flight. Um, no, that doesn't make sense. Good morning and have a good flight. Whatever. See you soon, Lex!_

_Bye!_

_Chloe _

Thurs. 16 January 2008 00:16 PM

From: encoded

To: 

_Hey Chloe, this fast enough for you?_

_ Just a quick reply before going to bed. Yeah, I was still up. How thoughtful of you to send it to my private address :)_

_I am a very thoughtful kind of person. Since I am no longer permitted to incriminate myself, I will take this opportunity to stress my impressive thoughtfulness. _

_ I care nothing for you, I just want your money.) _

_ That's ok. I'm only after your body. It's a fair trade._

_ I thought you usually went for tall, thin brunettes?_

_And this is why I go for your body and not for your brains._

_ Chloe, to hell with my feelings of guilt! Have you yada yada yada self-flagellation blah blah blah I really am very, very sorry about this. It won't happen again, I swear._

_ Sorry, I edited your speech a little. You're forgiven, Lex. Chill._

_I feel so relieved. God, Chloe, give a man a moment to repent, will you?_

_ For which I am most sincerely regretful. Have I mentioned that yet? _

_ Only about fifty-two times, now. You're so cute when you're being meek. Wait, let me add a picture. It was discretely placed underneath my coffee cup this morning. I'm not ENTIRELY sure who drew it, but I think I look quite fetching in those high heeled _

_ boots, and I like how you seem to actually lick that whip._

_I would appreciate it if you wouldn't send these kind of pictures while I'm drinking whiskey. Do you know how bad that burns when you snort it out through your nose?_

_ It's barbaric. My dad shouldn't have had to apologize, I should. Did I? I can't _

_ remember. If I haven't yet, I apologize for that._

_ Fifty-three…Seriously, Lex, it's ok. How's that back of yours doing?_

_Pretty good, actually. It's not as if anyone would think __**I**__ was attacked in the sack two days ago._

_Sooo…you're free on Friday. Want to have dinner? You can bring that whip if you like, if you don't trust me to keep a distance. Well, let me know. And have fun with your Hope and your aircraft._

_So long,_

_Lex_

Thurs. 16 January 2008 00:25 PM

From: 

To: encoded

_Damn, man, you fast! I hardly had time to brush my teeth and put on my PJs. One more, then, one last reply and then I'm definitely off to bed._

_ I am a very thoughtful kind of person. Since I am no longer permitted to incriminate _

_ myself, I will take this opportunity to stress my impressive thoughtfulness. _

_Oh, I like it when you grovel. Just not for things I don't need you to grovel for._

_ I care nothing for you, I just want your money.) _

_ That's ok. I'm only after your body. It's a fair trade._

_ I thought you usually went for tall, thin brunettes?_

_ And this is why I go for your body and not for your brains._

_I sincerely wonder whether I should feel insulted or pleased…_

_ I would appreciate it if you wouldn't send these kind of pictures while I'm drinking_

_ whiskey. Do you know how bad that burns when you snort it out through your nose?_

_Serves you right for being an alcoholic. It's quite good, isn't it? __I suspect Lois. __I hope to god it's Lois, because if it isn't, I have some macing to do here at the office._

_(subject: Lex's back) Pretty good, actually. It's not as if anyone would think __**I**__ was attacked in the sack two days ago._

_Only your twisted dad did, honeybunch. And it doesn't look that bad anymore, anyway. _

_Sure, I'm for dinner on Friday. Your place? Guh, it's late. You make me stay up WAY past my bedtime! AND your own. You have a plane to catch in less than five hours. Go and get some sleep already, before you have another epileptic fit or whatever it was you were having!_

_Mm. I get the feeling you've removed some of the questions I asked you without me noticing it. I'm too tired to read back now. But I'll find out! And I'll bring my whip and make you spill, buster!_

_Right, off to bed. See you on Friday!_

_Hugs,_

_Chloe_


	35. Chapter 35

Sorry for the late post

**Sorry for the late post. And I'm STILL not done. Sigh. Ah well…**

**Thirty-five: In which things begin to come to a closure**

They had both agreed that they should take a few days to let things settle down, and they hadn't seen each other for three days now, although Lex had emailed her to ask if she wanted to have dinner on Friday, and Chloe had replied that she'd love to.

The problem was that Friday evening was still two days away and Lex had found out that ever since that night of tainted love his sex drive had short-circuited.

He wanted her. Badly. And he wanted her ALL the bloody TIME. This, at least, had nothing to do with love, it was pure lust. He was more or less used to relationships based on lust, but this was even worse than with Desiree. At least when he was away from her for an hour or so he was able to think of other things than his dick whining for attention.

Not so now.

He woke up with a hard-on. If he had time he took care of that under the shower, if he didn't have time he drove to work with a hard-on. He went through meetings in New York with a hard-on. He visited people and inspected factories with a hard-on. He spoke at a conference (also in New York, airily inserted into his schedule by his pit bull of a P.A., Mary) with a hard-on, and was increasingly glad his slacks were wide enough to hide it. In the evening, he arrived at the hotel with the same persistent hard-on, took care of it and felt it come back to life when he went to bed, where he lay, sleepless, trying to ignore it until he couldn't stand it anymore and then took care of it again.

It was crazy. It didn't make sense. One would think that after that kind of sado-masochism he'd feel reluctant to make love to her, but he could hardly wait to rip off her panties and push her down in the foyer. Or on the table. On the couch. Hell, he didn't care where, as long as he could HAVE her again.

His biggest fear was that she didn't feel the same, that she'd shrink back from him like he had shrunk away from Clark; that she'd consequently would want to take it slow. He didn't think he would survive that.

Wednesday, the evening of the Email Conversation (also known as Chloe's version of Lex's own '_Clark. Stop incriminating yourself, and stop apologizing. It's tiresome. We're both fine, I accept your apology and as long as it won't happen again any time soon I'm still volunteering for repetitions.')_ ended in wet dreams.

Thursday presented itself sticky yet hard at three thirty A.M. It passed in a haze of unabated sexual frustration. There was only one moment his libido shriveled up and went into a coma, and that was when his father quietly entered his office at four, closing the soundproof door softly behind him.

"Lex. We need to talk."

Abruptly, Lex's pants went from tight to perfect measure, causing him to sigh in relief even as his need to squirm increased. Thanks to Chloe's generously supplied tip he knew why Lionel was here, and he also knew the kind of speech he was going to get. Knowing that Chloe had already forgiven him didn't change the fact that whatever Lionel had to say to him was the brutal truth. Neither would it make swallowing his dad's words any easier.

He turned off his screen, hoping he didn't look as guilty as he felt. By the look on his father's face he was succeeding; he could see his own bland, arrogant expression reflected in Lionel's smoldering eyes.

"Dad."

"Yesterday," Lionel started in a dangerously flippant tone and ignoring what might be a greeting or an insult, "I happened to, ah, run into an old mutual acquaintance of ours. Someone you claim to have stopped seeing. Miss Sullivan."

And Lex couldn't, _couldn't_ refrain. "You just happened to run into her?"

"_Lex_…" Lionel growled. Lex held up his hands. _Sorry, Dad._ _Continue your verbal spanking_. "You told me your…relationship with her was over. Insignificant, at the least. Yet when I drove away from the Mansion last Monday I could have sworn I recognized the car and the face inside of it as it drove up your driveway."

Lex clenched his jaws together, forcing himself to keep the flood of taunts, quips and snarling defense inside. Better let the old bastard think he could catch Lex flat-footed because taking the wind out of his sails before he could tack might result in even uglier conversation.

"You don't deny it, then?" Lionel asked.

"I wouldn't dare question your eyesight, Dad."

"Goddamnit, Lex!" Lionel spat with unexpected vehemence. "You don't treat a woman like that! Of all the things I've taught you, that should have been the one thing you shouldn't have condescendingly discarded. Apart from the fact that it can severely damage your reputation…Lex, her wrists!" He drew himself up to icy control once more, contempt oozing from his every pore. "I know you have had a period of…less than controlled behavior. I had hoped you'd grown over it. You no longer qualify for a young rebel, Lex. Giving oneself over to Sex and Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll might be acceptable when one is in the last stages of juvenility, but not when you're reaching thirty. Conduct such as this will not be condoned—not by the masses, and most certainly not by me. If you cannot control your baser instincts, I suggest you take your needs to circles where they…"

"_EXCUSE me_?" Lex bellowed, "What the hell are you implying? That I make a habit of abusing women?" It never occurred to him to deny whatever accusation Lionel had ready for him concerning Chloe's bruises, but this was ridiculous. He had had to work HARD at being a rapist, thank you very much. It wasn't something that came easily to him, nor was he inclined to repeat it in the near future.

Lionel's eyebrows rose and then drew to a straight line above his aquiline nose. "Do you mean to say that the bruises I saw on Miss Sullivan's wrists, the day after she went to see you at the Mansion in Smallville, which is over three hours by car from her current residence, were caused, as she claimed, by a slamming door, and not by your fingers?"

"No," Lex gritted out. "You were right about that. However, _you_ might like to consider why she told you they were caused by a door instead of by my fingers."

"She defended you," Lionel said with a shrug. "She would; she's in love with you. Women have been fools for love before…" He trailed off, and Lex rather belatedly collected his lower jaw from the floor. His father's condemning mouth quivered, then spread in a mocking smile. "Oh, Lex," he laughed. "Did you really think you'd convinced me she meant nothing to you? You've met her almost every day since you came out of the hospital. And as for her…Dear god, did you ever doubt her loving you? I may not agree with your methods but it is a fact that you do have a certain way with women that makes them flock to you like pigeons. Even if they DO leave you like pigeons, too. Intelligent, beautiful women, like your ambitious wife—ex-wife—Helen, and yes, Miss Sullivan, as well. One cannot deny that she possesses certain…qualities."

Lex could only stare at his father in total confusion. _Was that a compliment to my choice of women? Is he actually APPROVING of Chloe? Or is he still insulting me?_

Lionel's brow furrowed again. "Which makes your behavior all the more despicable. You never use violence against women, Lex. Never. It shows bad breeding, and while you have been a disappointment on many fronts, I would like to think that your breeding is pedigree."

_I knew that Doberman-look came from somewhere else than just that bump against the wheel,_ Lex thought. He was slightly reassured, though. This was definitely an insult. He was used to insults. He didn't like them, but he could deal with them—better than with ambiguous remarks about his success with the fairer sex.

"You can rest assured, Dad," he drawled. "I haven't besmirched the family name."

"If those marks are yours, you did," Lionel said coldly.

Lex felt the blood rush to his cheeks and forced it back down. He could. He had followed courses on repressing blushes. "If I remember correctly you had a certain way of punishing your son…"

"You," Lionel said, "are not a woman. And don't compare a parent's disciplinal actions with manhandling women. What did you do to her that caused those bruises? Tied her up? Forced yourself on her? Did you beat her?"

"No!"

"You did pin her down. She must have struggled to cause that kind of discoloration."

Lex cringed. _She forgave me. Hell, she hardly let me apologize. It's none of his bloody business._ Still, the way his father described it made him feel just a little bit like the monster he'd tried to be to prove a point, and wasn't, really. It was not a comfortable feeling. He threw his head in his neck. "I should think this is a matter between Chloe and me. You have nothing to do with it."

"If you cause harm to helpless women, I would say I am most definitely involved."

_Helpless? You should've seen me bleed out my heart's blood on my sheets, Dad!_

…

_And god was she hot tearing the living daylights out of me._

He experienced an unexpected surge of lust and battered it down with a doughtiness that was nothing short of heroic. There was something desperately disturbing about being read the riot act by his father about harassing young women while all he wanted to do was drag the young woman that was the cause of this lecture to the nearest bed and ravish her some more.

"Next time we'll be more careful," he tried, hoping to shock Lionel into abandoning his child-rearing mood.

His father's lip curled with disgust, but unfortunately he did not leave.

"Look, Dad, if she doesn't mind, why do you?"

"It is a matter of principle."

"It is a matter of preference!"

"Don't tell me you prefer to hold down women while you have intercourse with them like some sort of animal."

Lex was reminded of a program he'd watched on Animal Planet the evening before. It had featured rhinos. The voice-over insisted on calling their mating rituals 'having intercourse' as well. Lex imagined Lionel's cultured drawl describing hot one-on-one rhino action, (_The male now mounts the female, but does not hold her down, because that would be a poor sign of breeding…) _and smirked.

"No, Dad," he said, calm again, "I don't. But what I do in my bed really is none of your business. I never meant to hurt Chloe" Oh, that was a lie, even though it was the truth, "and if there is anyone more sorry to see her bruised in any way, it's me." Hard truth. "If it makes you feel better, she hurt me plenty in return. I just heal faster."

Lionel's eyebrows did that fluttery thing again. Lex made a mental note to ask James if Lionel had already tried to buy him away from Lex. He abandoned that train of thought when his father repeated, "You shouldn't hurt women, Lex." It came out almost sad.

He nodded sharply. "I know. And I don't. It's barbaric, cowardly and shameful. You've taught me well on that account. I am fully aware of it. The fact that I did this time…trust me, Dad, there was a good" call that _absurd_! "reason, and I apologized and she forgave me. She is," he murmured as an afterthought, "a highly remarkable woman."

"Yes," Lionel mused. "That she is."

Now Lex was certain. "Could it be that you actually approve of Chloe?"

Lionel shrugged. "She is a worthy opponent."

"She is not your opponent!"

"Well, if _I_ couldn't scare her away from you, if being kidnapped because some retard wants you _dead_ doesn't scare her away from you, and if you _assaulting_ her doesn't scare her away from you, she definitely is your ally, which more or less renders her my opponent, doesn't it?" He flashed his son a wide, surprisingly charming grin. It was gone in a second, but Lex was certain it had been there and reacted to it with the same helplessness as he did to Clark's smile and Chloe's laughter. He lowered his guard.

Lionel slipped under it like a Turkish dagger. "You won't be able to keep her, you know," he said, and that mocking little smile took the place of the grin. "You are simply not capable of keeping women like that tied to you. She may love you now but she'll find out what you are really like, and then you'll lose her."

"She already knows what I'm like," Lex bristled back.

"Really? Do you really think so? What's more important, do you trust her that much to show her that much of you?"

His smug expression faltered as Lex burst out in laughter, and at that moment Lex knew that the lecture was over. _Dad, I just RAPED her, and I didn't lose her. I even believe, absurdly enough, that it brought us closer_. He wiped his eyes, smudging real tears of humor. "Yes, Dad, I do trust her that much."

"She'll destroy you."

"I don't think so."

"Lex, if she won't destroy you by digging up your hidden crimes, she'll destroy you when she leaves you. And she will leave you. She is like that Kent boy in that aspect. She will see the reality you hide behind glass and mirrors and abandon you."

Lex shrugged, even though his old paranoia twisted in his gut like a manta below the sand. "I don't think so."

Lionel frowned. "Have you learned nothing from the past?"

"Don't go on honey moon by plane?"

"Not that. I was referring to…"

"Don't you want grandchildren, Dad?"

The look of pure shock on Lionel's face was priceless. "_Grandchildren_?" he squeaked—well, Lex translated his slightly breathless exclamation as a squeak. "Lex, what on earth are you up to? Don't tell me you've proposed to her!"

"Relax," Lex said, studying the older man with sadistic glee. "I haven't. I might, one of these days, but I think it would be prudent until those marks on her wrists have faded, don't you agree?"

"Marrying that Sullivan girl would be a spectacularly bad decision," Lionel snapped. "She isn't suitable for you."

"I thought you considered her a worthy opponent. Can you imagine having a reporter in the family, Dad?"

Lionel's horror-struck expression told him that daddy-dearest could very well imagine so. It would be like a treasure hunt for Chloe.

Lex smiled serenely. He wasn't planning on proposing to Chloe, not anytime soon, anyway. It was too soon. He'd likely scare her off. No, he'd have to prepare her gently, manipulate her deftly until there really wasn't any other option left or desirable to her. That did not stop him from shamelessly winding his father up. Lionel didn't have to know that he HAD learned from the experience with Helen and all those other girlfriends he had presented with rings before he'd even knew for sure what kind of color their hair was.

His computer pinged. He turned on the screen.

"I really think it would be…" Lionel started hotly, but Lex interrupted him.

"I'm really sorry, Dad, but I have an appointment scheduled in five minutes. I'm afraid I have to go." He was quite content with the way the conversation had progressed. Not only had he succeeded in taking Lionel's mind off the bruises on a helpless damsel, but he had also managed to scare him out of his pants with visions of journalistically inclined in-laws. Yes, this had gone exceptionally well.

Lionel sputtered, but gave up after a few seconds, and finally regarded his son with something that came close to grudging admiration. Lex smiled back beatifically.

Lionel shook his head. "You know this will end badly."

"Yes, Dad. Bye, Dad."

He frowned, then smirked, and for a moment Lex knew they resembled one another so closely the people who had professed doubt about Lionel's parentage to Lex (there had been a few, all silent, now, if they knew what was best for them) would be convinced they were related by blood after one glance.

Lionel gave him a nod, his cool back in place, a sense of doom radiating from him much like the subtle cologne he splashed on his person in the morning, and left with a straight back and a raised chin.

Lex chuckled. He waited for sixty seconds, in which he straightened his tie, took a sip of water and closed Outlook's nagging reminder window before leaving the room himself, grinning in a way that made his employees share worried glances.

Chloe's only experience at horse riding had been when she was about fourteen and Lana wanted her to share the delight of a great muscled brute between her legs. Lana had, of course, not put it quite that way, but that was how Chloe's journalistic genius had summed it up. The kinkiness had tempted her to try and ascend a horse, but the experience had not been exactly what she'd hoped for. Spreading her legs this far to accommodate the creature's back felt uncomfortable, the horse wouldn't do what she wanted, and she rode like a bag of potatoes. When the horse burst into gallop it finally threw her off, and while nothing but her pride was hurt, she refused to get on another horse and kept a respectful distance of horses.

When Lana's horse crushed Lana's leg four years later, Chloe congratulated herself on her sensible resolution.

Lana had ridden like an Amazon. Chloe could drive a car when she was fourteen. She could also use every word processing program ever created for the computer. However, neither cars nor computers came with riding crops, and so Chloe visited Lana with a solid excuse and drove home with a huge grin on her face.

She couldn't wait to see Lex.

She couldn't wait to see his reaction.

On Friday morning Lex thought he might have to start considering his erection a separate entity. Maybe if he gave it a name and requested it to leave it would go. Maybe he could reason with it.

Nope.

With one day left to go he hadn't had sex for exactly four days, barely enough time to make even the last spidery scars on his back fade away to nothing, and yet it felt worse than the three months he'd gone without on his desert island. Maybe Chloe had accidentally ripped through some sexual chakra, or maybe he had grown a sex addiction while he wasn't looking, but it was here and it wasn't going away.

The Metropolis LuthorCorp Technology Center was working on a new strategy to crack open the Far East for business. He sat through three meetings that went into one ear and out of the other without leaving a single residue. Chloe called him at four, and he almost panicked when he saw her number. If she were to call it off he was going to rupture something. He excused himself for a moment and left the room feeling slightly lightheaded, and his finger actually trembled as he pressed the send button.

"Chloe?" he asked.

"Hey, yeah, it's me. Umm…"

_Don't tell me you're not coming. Don't tell me you're late._

"Uh, Lex…I was wondering…Can I come a bit earlier? I'm about finished here and…If it's inconvenient I'll understand, but…"

"No," said Lex, walked over to his office and shut down his computer by pressing the On button. "I'm done. I'll see you at my place."

"Yo!" She hung up and Lex breathed a huge sigh of relief. Christ, he was about to come in his pants simply because she said she'd be early.

He went back to the meeting and said he was called away on urgent business. Well, it was urgent all right, so he didn't have to feel guilty. Then he ran out of the building, jumped into his car and soared home.

"Afternoon, Victor," he said as he noticed his favorite guard sitting at the counter.

Victor smiled a knowing little smile. "Good afternoon, Mister Luthor. The young lady arrived a few minutes ago. She's already gone up."

Lex had changed his instructions considering the rights of entry of Miss Sullivan; she was to be let through directly upon arrival. He was so, so glad he had remembered to pass instructions this morning.

"Thank you," said Lex. He sauntered towards the elevator, waited for it to arrive with his hands in his pockets, looking for all the world as if he were in no hurry at all. The moment he entered the elevator, however, he fell back against the wall, blinking away stars. _For fuck's sake, I need some blood in my brain to keep upright! Stop incapacitating me, you'll get what you want soon enough. Well, either you will or you'll burst, and whatever you do, I'll be rid of you._ The elevator had cameras, and so he exercised some self-control, but it was fucking hard, especially since he was getting the idea that his cock was taking over his body, sucking it empty and taking its place. It'd just keep growing until Lex was the dangly appendage, and no one would notice the difference. _All it needs is a couple of eyes and a suit and hey presto, instant Luthor copy…I might call him Alexander. Huh, that would be funny. Then I'd finally be a prick full-time._

He was uncharacteristically clumsy when he put his key in the lock; it took him three tries before he managed to open the door.

"There you are!" Chloe said, stalking out of the sitting room on bare feet. There was something predator-like about the way she walked—_well oiled and smooth_, Lex's oversexed brain provided in a futile attempt at computer simile. All he could do was pant.

"Hey," he finally managed. And then his mind must be playing tricks on him again because he could swear Chloe took a few steps to gain momentum and then leapt towards him with the grace of an antelope. He stuck out his arms nevertheless and caught her—and he'd been wrong, she wasn't an antelope, she was a predator after all. The kind that rubbed like a cat, a full body-rub, and suddenly the last brittle line of restraint broke and he delved into the mouth opened up to him, lifted her and pulled her up against him, not caring if he accidentally crushed her backbone.

"I missed you…" he gasped in between kisses that were really far too sloppy to be called that, "God, I missed you so much…"

"Christ, you're hard," she panted back, scrabbling at his pant's fastening. His hips bucked so hard he nearly fell over.

"Yeah…Well…I'm glad you feel the same."

"It's all your fault!" she growled, and tugged at his shirt before deciding that it cost her less time to just undo the buttons than to try and tear it from his shoulders. "You turned me into a fucking nymphomaniac. I used to be a well-behaved, proper, prim girl and now I've become this wanton…how does this open?…slut. No," she added, and resisted when he tried to push her head down to a more convenient level where she could put that mouth to a better use, "No, no, no."

"No?" Lex pouted, and she grinned and shook her head for emphasis.

"No. State you're in, you'll probably finish in three seconds flat and then pass out on me."

"State I am in," Lex said as dryly as his blood-starved brains could manage, "I'm probably going to drown you." It was not exactly a seductive thing to say, and he did have something else in mind but he couldn't recall what had left his throat.

Chloe bit her lip. "Ah…I…I see. Drown me, eh?" She giggled. Lex took the opportunity to divest her of her sweater and the slinky shirt underneath.

"Christ, just go back to saying you're a slut, will you?"

"I'm beginning to think you're actually worse than me. I could do stretching exercises on that pole of yours." She reached into his boxers, pulled his erection toward her with the tip of her finger and let it bounce back against his stomach.

In reply Lex slid his hand into her panties, making her squeak and then moan and then gasp. "Shall we not discuss our various embarrassing states of sexual readiness?" he suggested pleasantly. "Because if you start about bar exercises I could make it a complete triathlon and add swimming."

"I thought you…had that covered already…" she panted back. "Besides…we need another sport to make it a…triathlon."

"How about lifting?" proposed Lex, picked her up and carried her to his bedroom.

"Oh Jesus Christ."

"What?"

"They're BLACK!"

Chloe opened her eyes and waited until her brain could process these cryptic words. Sight helped: she found Lex, wrapped up in rubber like a Christmas present, holding her underarms as if they were made of glass, or porcelain, or something else incredibly fragile. He'd crawled off her body to a kneeling position between her legs, and his eyes went from her arms to her sides and then to her thighs and he didn't look as if he were going to drown her anymore.

"You're black and blue all over."

_Yeah, well, that happens when you hold someone really, really tightly. Like you did_. "It's ok," she said curtly. She didn't have the patience to indulge Lex in self-incriminating behavior. "Actually, they're more like a purplish-blue-brown-greenish. They're already fading."

"Do they hurt?"

"No."

"They look painful."

"So did those shot wounds of yours, but that didn't stop you from having wild bunny sex with me."

His mouth quirked at the 'bunny sex', but he was still tripping on guilt, she could see that. "You weren't the one to shoot me."

Chloe whined. Sure, sex with Lex was never what you expected, but this was ridiculous. She's had four days to heal, and even if her skin still showed the results of Lex's short-lived occupation as a rapist, she hardly even thought about it anymore. She guessed it was a bit of an understatement to call what Lex had done to her 'being in a snit' but damn it, that's what he'd been doing. Throwing a hissy fit. Throwing a tantrum. Doing some destructive role-playing. In some weird way, she'd understood that, and accepted it. He'd apologized already, she'd forgiven him and she was ready to go on.

Lex, however, looked in dire need of further exculpation. _That's what you get when the other person heals so much faster than you_, she thought grumpily. _I thought my mail was clear on that. _She bet he wouldn't be so atoning if his back were still hurting. Maybe she should give him an uppercut, just to even the score a little.

She didn't feel like slugging Lex.

She felt like having glorious sex for the next hour or so.

There would be preciously little glory if he was afraid to touch her.

"Oh for God's sake…" she exclaimed. "Fine! Turn around. Lie down." She sat up and pushed him down. "On your back. No, hands to your sides. No, even better, put them up next to your head."

Doubt entered Lex's eyes, pushing at the guilt. He closed them when she positioned herself in his lap and swayed up; she swatted at his hands as they came up to rest on her hips.

"Uh-uh! You don't trust me when I say I'm fine, so you can keep your hands to yourself. Or should I tie you to the bedpost?"

"I don't think that will be necessary," Lex said solemnly, and then gasped when she gave a cruel little wriggle. The hands next to his ears curled into fists. Chloe hummed appreciatively as he very quickly grew just as hard again as he'd been when she'd jumped him in the hallway.

"So, Lex," she said conversationally, rocking gently forward and backward and watching with interest the clench of his fists and the tendons rise in his neck, "how's your day been?"

Lex could not withstand games of playing chicken, not even in the sack. His eyes opened. "Oh," he drawled, only wavering once when she rose a little on her knees and then ground down again, "A day like any other day. I had a few meetings with the Tech Cen—Tech Center people. They're really interesting. Their proposals, I mean, the people themselves are horribly boring. How about you?"

"Same old, same old." She couldn't hold in a low moan when he thrust up, but then recovered admirably. "I had another appointment with Hope. She turns out to be quite ok. Poor kid's seriously screwed up, though. She…she…She's pretty much drawn off-track, you might say, by those…kind of boys…and girls…and…well, you know…What is it, Lex, you gonna come already?"

"No," Lex panted. "Go on. I'm listening with…rapt attention." His eyes opened wide as she leaned forward and put her hands on his fists. They opened so she could thread her fingers through his.

"You sure?" she asked, speeding up.

"V-very."

"You don't look like you're going to make it for a very long time, though."

"Try me."

She kissed him, then, slowing down again to enjoy the act instead of feeling as if she were in a car with no suspension driving over a country road. "So," she whispered, pulling back, "I still have time to go and get my whip?"

"Aw, fuck…" Lex whispered, arched his back and made her giggle when his fingers clenched around hers.

Finally. It was still one to about thirty, but she HAD made him come first. Reason enough for celebration. She pulled away from him. "Tell me when you're good to go again, will you?" and she left the bed to go and fetch the bottle of cheap, sweet Champagne, the kind she actually LIKED from the sitting room, where she'd left it. And Lana's whip, of course.

Forty-five minutes later Lex sat up from his comfortable sprawl, noted with relief that his libido was finally satisfied, and gently prodded Chloe in the shoulder.

"Food?"

She raised an approving thumb.

"Out or in?"

"Make spaghetti for me, Lex."

"Or what? You're going to whip me with that crop?" Chloe gave an evil chuckle. He wasn't all that afraid she'd follow through with it. Nails, ok. Whips, no. The image was a hell of a turn-on, but unfortunately he knew from experience that the actual act was everything but. He'd been whipped once in a private club by a beautiful Japanese girl in white latex, but different than a score of other men he had never concluded it was arousing. He wasn't a horse, for god's sake. If he wanted to be disciplined by a woman he'd call Heidi and have her kick his ass in Fencing.

He got up, found his boxers and went on a search for the rest of his clothes.

Chloe rolled onto her stomach and watched him with the same happiness a slave owner might have displayed when watching a prime cotton picker.

"When are you going to China again?"

"Next week, on Friday," Lex said, picking up his shirt. It was inside out. He cast her a searching glance. "My offer still stands. If you want, you can come with me."

Chloe hesitated. Lex sensed no fear or resentment in that pause, just uncertainty, and smiled internally. He returned to his shirt. "They have such strange customs in China," he said conversationally, addressing its buttons. "Whenever a single foreign visitor arrives they feel the need to offer them their daughters and other female family members for…um…entertainment." Behind him, Chloe had frozen to absolute stillness. "But Chinese girls are so small, and it's very hard on the knees, so…"

"Okay already!" she shrieked, and threw a pillow to his head. He caught it in a reflex. "I'll come with you! And I'll tell you something else, too, Mister Luthor! If you ever, ever screw another woman while you have me, I swear to god, that article I just threw away…I'll dig it back up from the recesses of my hard drive and publish it to the press, you got that? I'll haunt your ass to the end of the world and I'll whip it to bloody _shreds_!"

"Yes," Lex drawled. He knew he shouldn't provoke her, not now things were finally running more or less smoothly again between the two of them, but he simply couldn't help himself. "If you're holding the whip I guess it would get pretty bloody."

She gaped at him, her mouth opening and closing without bringing forth a sound. The corners of her mouth wobbled from up to down as she tried to decide whether to get even madder or burst out laughing. "You're AWFUL!" she finally cried.

Lex beamed at her. "Yup. But you knew that already, so you can't get angry at me. That's what you told me on Monday."

Chloe raised her finger in protest, then dropped it, reconsidering. "That's pretty devious of you."

"I'm smarter than I look."

"You're entirely too smart for your own good."

She might be right about that. Lex put on his shirt, couldn't find his pants and decided he could boil pasta without. He picked up the half-empty bottle of godawful Champagne Chloe had brought along. "Come on. I need someone to splatter on when I make the sauce.

'You can _leave_ the whip, Chloe."

And so the peace was restored. Chloe had done as she had promised: she had burned her article. It had hurt for a moment, but she had given it a cremation as well as a hard disk burial, ignoring the cries of _Mommmmyyyyyy! Mommmyyyyyy!_ she could so clearly imagine coming from the blank file—her baby, her Mordred, was officially dead.

Edge's files she had packed into a specially for that reason purchased small suitcase and handed over to Lex, to put in his vault. Or destroy, whatever he saw fit. The evening after their make-up session, Lex had read through everything she had given him while she studied him from the cough, and then burned it in the hearth of his penthouse, the fire casting odd and frightening shadows and lights over his serious face as he fed the fire the papers one by one.

"You do know what this means, don't you?" he asked when the last A4 was wilting in the flames.

Chloe could think of a hundred things he might be implying, so she just waited.

"You haven't only forgiven me for those crimes, but also made it impossible for anyone to take it to court and get me convicted for them."

"Yes," she said calmly. "I'm aware of that. I'm still waiting for Edge's admonishing email. But Lex, before you give me a responsibility complex…If _I_ wanted to bring you down, there are other ways."

"Ye-es," Lex exhaled. He shot her a curiously bitter smile. "I noticed that."

"Not that I was planning to do anything of the sort."

"I should hope not."

"I could, though," she said, allowing a lighter note into her voice to tell him she was only teasing. "I could make you lick Lana's whip and make a picture with my phone, then put it on the Planet's intranet. Or give it to Lois, as a special thank-you for her lovely drawing."

"Oh, we're talking _pictures_ now," Lex caught up immediately. His mouth spread in the evil smile she had learned to fear. "If it's photo blackmail we're discussing, let me get my phone. Where is it…Ah, here. Hang on, let me type in my password. There. Don't you think this is a beauty? The way it's taken from the back but still shows your breasts reflected in the glass? Wouldn't it look good in the next Luthor-sponsored campaign for safe sex? Or maybe a beer commercial? 'Heineken loves a glass', or something?"

Chloe stared, dumbfounded, at the very revealing and highly recognizable picture on Lex's cell. "HOW DID YOU GET THIS?"

Lex flipped his phone closed. He was smugness personified. "Well, those ARE my windows, you know…" He regarded her with his eyes half closed, then grabbed the edge of her sweater and began to pull it over her head. "Speaking of which…"

The weekend went by in pleasant pre-coital, coital and post-coital bliss, and Monday arrived. Lex went back to work, resolved to finally pull his weight as he should be doing for a change. As he was reading through a report on the latest results of his U-boat company his phone ran, and he picked it up without taking his eyes of the paper. He subconsciously expected it to be the Mad Russian Martrov, calling to tell him he couldn't attend the life feed streaming meeting they had planned at eleven because he had accidentally destroyed his computer.

"Lex Luthor."

"Hi Lex."

He looked up from the report, surprised. No heavy Russian accent, but a girl's Southern drawl. "Jessica?"

"Yeah."

"Is something wrong?"

The girl laughed. "No, not really. I was just calling because, well...Most of us are leaving the day after tomorrow. My mom and dad'll pick me up this Wednesday at three. So I was wondering...Will you come by one more time before then? Because I just wanted to say goodbye, and I wasn't sure I'd see you before I left."

Lex opened his agenda, although he knew it by heart. Wednesday. He had a brunch meeting with some schmuck from Wayne Enterprises, but he should be able to finish that before two-thirty. Before Wednesday he should be lucky if he managed to get home before nine.

"I'll be there," he promised. "I'll see you off. How are your prophetic flashes?"

"Diminishing," she said. "Less frequent, in any case. But I still have them. I saved my little brother's pet rat from drowning, yesterday, because I had a flash of him drowning in a bucket and Jenny was just in time to fish him out."

"That's marvelous," Lex smiled. "So that means that you can definitely change the future with that gift of yours."

"Yeah...But I couldn't change yours."

"But you could change, and perhaps already did change Michael's," Lex said. "He's still alive, and getting better every day. And now you've saved a rat. I see definite progress."

She laughed.

Lex' Outlook agenda pinged, alerting him to the fact that this was his last chance to make it to the internet conference with the Mad Russian of the Pipelines. "Jessica, I have to go. I'll see you on Wednesday, alright?"

"Ok," She said. "See you then!"

Lex hung up and stared down on his phone for a while. Yes, the children were cured, at least of the disease. Emmy and Michael were still very weak and needed additional treatment, but in a few weeks they, as well, could go home. Another chapter closed. Atonement achieved.

_Penitence over the backs of thirty or so children, _one of the demons in his mind spoke up. _You saved twenty-six, but how many died before you swallowed your pride and asked Clark to donate his blood and cure your company's lethal mistake? _

_I did what I could, _Lex answered the little voice. _And as for swallowing my pride…It wasn't that. I hadn't thought about it. And he hadn't offered it. And before I was shot…I doubt he would have given it to me. So something good has come out of that after all._

He smirked at himself, then sighed and typed in a number that was not saved in the address book of his phone. Spoke to the man on the other side of the line, and made an appointment for Thursday next week. He still had a couple of promises to keep, after all.

It was amazing how fast the days went by when he wasn't sick, kidnapped, shot or betrayed. One day bled into the other, and before he knew it it was weekend again. Lex took Chloe to the opera, and was pleasantly surprised when she not only liked but adored it. Die Zauberflote. The Magical Flute. Of course this was one of the easier operas despite its length, almost a fairy tale, and the costumes and props were beautiful. He had expected her to be enchanted but to start flagging as the play wore on after the second intermission, but she loved it all the way and talked excitedly about it all the way back to the hotel.

Lex himself cared little for opera. He'd seen them all, and the grandeur always reminded him somewhat of his father. Lionel loved the bombast of opera. Lex would always prefer the bombast of Rammstein. But he was happy to take Chloe out, buy her opera binoculars and Champagne in the first intermission and have her cling to him on the first balcony while she whispered things like 'Is the prince wearing socks in his leggings?' and 'That woman is going to burst out of her corset if she takes in more air,' into his ear.

On Sunday they went to the Zoo, much to Lex's misgivings, but despite his reservations he found he actually enjoyed loitering around the park and watching the animals. He hadn't been in a zoo since he was nine, and being a bald nine-year-old in a zoo hadn't been much fun; neither for him nor his parents. Now, no one seemed to care. And the animals were nice. There was something to be said, he supposed, for drinking hot chocolate out of a plastic cup while observing a pair of sea otters frolicking over your head in their underground aquarium.

Monday arrived and went. Chloe had another interview with Hope and decided to take her ice skating on the rink in the center. At first Hope did not show much enthusiasm, but Chloe persuaded her to come and they had a wonderful afternoon skating. In the evening she told Lex, sitting somewhat awkwardly in her overstuffed chair with a plate of lasagna on his lap, how they'd only had about half an hour left to talk about Hope's comeback to the normal world, but that she didn't consider one second of the afternoon a waste of time.

She then added that she'd manipulated Perry into giving her time off to go to China with Lex and that, Lex said, was a pretty perfect way to end the day.

Tuesday passed in meetings and a visit to the U-boat factory before it ended in bed with Chloe.

On Wednesday Chloe was sent out to Boston for an interview. Lex brunched with the schmucks from Wayne Enterprises who naggled endlessly over fine lettering and spoken promises, and he barely made it to LuthorCare before two.

The children's room was bustling with chatting, packing, shouting and laughing children. A few nurses were helping the little ones put all their clothes and toys in bags, which the children then immediately pulled out again and spread over the room.

Ronnie steadfastly refused any help packing the great length of his railway track; he had laid out the entire track in pieces on his bed and was now putting it into its carton box with tongue-out-of-mouth concentration. He did not seem to notice the shouts of the other

children nor Lex's presence when he stopped to look over the boy's shoulder.

Lex smiled and left him to his packing. Other children greeted him, and he greeted them back, accepted a handshake here and even a hug there, and one horse made of clay with cocktail pins for legs from Amy.

He found Jessica on her bed on the other side of the room, trying her very best to cram a faded pink bunny into her already overflowing rucksack. Lex observed her attempts for a few moments before she felt him staring and looked up.

"Need help?" Lex asked, grinning.

She gave up on the bunny with a sigh. "I need an extra bag! I really don't wanna leave this place with this thing in my hand. It's my brother's," she added. "He gave it to me so I wouldn't feel lonely."

"That's generous of him."

"Not really. It isn't his favorite toy. But the gesture was nice, yeah." She grinned up at him. Lex didn't know whether it was because she was dressed in a white fleece sweater and jeans instead of PJs and house wear, but he thought her bald head looked strangely out of place. His scientists said they were working on a way to unblock the gene that blocked the kids' hair growth using Amy's cells. Lex had cautioned them to be careful. He didn't want the kids to get sick again. They were cured now, but he didn't want to be responsible for any kind of cancerous backlash.

Personally he was so used to Jessica's smooth white head he found it difficult to imagine her with hair. She looked rather exotic, he thought. Then again, he was biased, he guessed. Both by his own freakiness and the fact that he adored the girl.

"So," he said, putting his hands in his pockets. "You're off home."

"Yup. Back to my mom and dad, my brother and the baby and the dog." She smiled, a little bit sad. "I never would've met you if I hadn't ended up here, would I?"

"I doubt it, no," said Lex. He briefly wondered why that should make her feel sad. It wasn't as if he'd had an impact on her life—at least not in any positive way.

"You're very different in reality than you are on TV," the girl said, giving him some kind of explanation. "Why do you try to come across so...cold? I know you aren't, and it's

such a shame, really."

Lex smirked. Her next words wiped that smirk away.

"If you didn't pretend to be someone else maybe people wouldn't want to shoot you."

She gazed down on her bunny. "I'd hate to have another flash of you dying in some forest. And I have the feeling that there are a lot of people who might want to hurt you. My uncle hates you. Many of my friends' parents hate you. Hell, as far as I knew you were like the worst person in history. And you're not." She looked up, and the innocence in her eyes robbed her words of any condescendence. "So. Why do you create an image that is so hard to like if you could behave to other people like you do to us?"

"Children are different than grown-ups."

"Well, duh."

"It's complicated," Lex said, which was a coward's way out. He was saved from having to give a better explanation by the arrival of Jessica's parents. They were in a hurry since they had left the baby girl in the car with Jesse's little brother (hospitals being unsanitary places highly unsuitable for small children), but when Jessica pulled her mother aside and said, "That's Lex Luthor," her mother, who introduced herself as Tracy Lockley and who resembled Jessica eerily, gave him a firm handshake and studied him with the same frank blue eyes as her daughter.

"It's good to meet you," she said after a few seconds' assessment, and gave him a broad, open smile. "Thank you." No tears, no speeches of gratitude. Just the firm grip of her fingers and that smile, and it was more than enough; far preferable to Emmy's mother's sobbed gratefulness. Her husband only shook his hand, holding the stuffed rabbit in the other since Jessica didn't want to carry it. When she turned to him Lex didn't know whether to embrace her or kiss her or stay away from her; which she remedied by flinging her arms around his waist and hugging him.

"Bye, Lex. Stay out of forests, will you."

He caressed the back of her head. "I will. You be careful too. And if anything goes wrong with those flashes of yours, be sure to give me a call. If anything is wrong at all, just call me."

"Your phone…"

"Keep it," Lex said, then hastily looked at her parents. "If you may."

Jessica may. Well, phones weren't trucks, after all. She gave his hand a final squeeze, hooked her arm through her mother's elbow and skipped off, her father trailing after the women in his life with the bulging rucksack and the pink bunny.

The next parent to arrive was greeted by a hoarse crowing sound, the delighted scream of a boy who spent so much time yelling his vocal cords had run raw.

Ronnie's dad was definitely not from Metropolis. Maybe not from Smallville, but from some similar men-of-the-earth type of village; a man dressed in a dark red shirt that stretched tight over biceps swollen with the kind of honest workman's work, like chopping wood, or lifting machinery or, god forbid, farming. He was tall and dark-haired and dark-eyed, but Lex felt his shoulders draw up in reaction when this man looked at him with eyes like hostile cherries behind steel-rimmed glasses.

Yes. Cherries could be hostile. It was Jonathan bloody Kent all over again.

"Mister Luthor," the man said as he detected Lex, holding his son under one arm as if he were a squealing bread.

"Mister…" Lex licked his scar. He had no idea what the man's name was.

"Branson," the man saved him, sticking out his hand. Automatism, Lex thought. Taught to him by his daddy like his daddy taught him. _You say your name, you shake hands, son. That be th' way civilized folks greet oneunnuther_. "Don Branson. Ronnie's dad," he added, as if it wasn't blatantly obvious.

_Donald and his son Ronald_, Lex thought, feeling dislike activate the nasty-switch in his head. _Easier to remember if it rhymes_. Farmers would always make him feel uncomfortable, with their judging eyes, disdainful smiles and bone-breaking handshakes. Or maybe it was sheer jealousy. Lionel had given him riches beyond spending, his own company and the first step to presidency, but he'd never held Lex like he was a bread. As if he weighed nothing, but at the same time was as valuable as gold.

He smiled and shook the paw-like hand, feeling hard calluses rub against his own smooth, soft palm. "Lex," he said. Farmers would always have that effect on him, too, he guessed. He had hated Mister Kent even more than he'd admired him, but he had wanted to gain his respect until the very end. Salt o' the earth. Bad for the kidneys, but life was bland without it. He gestured at the living bread. "I was just saying goodbye to the children."

Don Branson only nodded. He casually transferred Ronnie from underneath his left arm to the crook of his right, and used the left to pick up the fit to bust box of railroad tracks. "It's good to take him home," was all he said, and in turn Lex had nothing to say either.

"BYE LEX!" hollered Ronnie. He waved so vigorously he almost dislodged his dad's glasses, even though he was still seated straight in front of Lex. "See you! Come play with me someday, ok? Dad, Lex can come and play with my train, right?"

"Sure he can," Pa Branson allowed, briefly rubbing his stubbly jaw against his son's bald head. Ronnie giggled and wrapped his arms around the big man's sunburned neck. Branson's eyes, instantly cool once they left the face of his boy, returned to Lex's face. But instead of the 'and then I'll put him down with my saw-off' expression Lex was expecting, they abruptly changed, grew warmer, and what he read in their depth was something he had seen, occasionally, in Jonathan Kent's eyes as well, and more frequently in his wife's.

Pity. A sudden understanding, and as a result, pity.

Lex leaned back his head so he could look down his nose, even though the man topped him by at least three inches, and broadened his shoulders, bristling. Hell if he were going to be pitied by some stupid country hick.

"Well," he drawled coldly, and to his enormous relief the pity disappeared again. "It's obvious he's in good hands. If you'll excuse me, I have a lot to do."

"Sure," Branson said. "And we've got a long way to travel yet, don't we, Son? Momma's home waiting for you. She just put the chicken into the stove when I left."

"Yay!" Ronnie screamed. Then, for one moment, he turned away from his dad and stuck out his hand to Lex; he almost hit him in the eye. Lex had taken it and shaken it before he could stop himself.

"Goodbye, Ronnie. It was good having you here and it's a million times better to see you go home. Have a good journey."

"I will," the boy said solemnly. "You too." He turned back to his father, flung his arms around his neck again. "Home!"

"Yes," his dad said. "Home. You done saying your goodbyes?"

"Yup."

"Good boy. Well, Mister Luthor," A lopsided grin instead of another hand, since both of those were full, "thanks for the support an' all. I had my doubts about you, but you did cure my boy and that's a fact, and for that you'll be in my prayers till my dyin' days."

"T-thanks," Lex said, completely taken aback.

The grin widened, and for one second, father and son looked so much alike the resemblance was downright scary. _Yes, you bloody yokel, you made me stutter. Cherish that feeling, you won't manage it again._ Then the smile disappeared and Branson's expression told Lex very clearly that although his name might be blessed by this good man till he blew out his last, it wouldn't keep him from putting Lex down like a dog if Lex ever happened to be in the neighborhood for any unlawful tycoon's business.

That was just fine. He could deal with that kind of expressions.

"Have a good journey," he repeated, and once again, Ronnie and Donnie nodded. They walked to the door, went through it, and disappeared. Lex, seeing more parents arrive, turned on his heel and fled into Valerie Decan's office.

She was in, and looked up from where she was sitting behind her desk, and her broad mouth spread in a rapacious grin. "Gotcha," she said, laying down her pen. "You're not getting out of here before you've promised you'll have coffee with me."

"Why, I promised last week, didn't I?" Lex covered smoothly. She got up, casually closed the blinds a bit further and gave him a quick hug—no kiss.

"Yes, but then you were lying," she said. She stood back, observing him, and nodded. "It's good to see you, Lex. I'm glad you came to say goodbye."

TBC

Grrrrrr….I need an epilogue!!


	36. Chapter 36 end

Smithers

Well, this is the last one. The final chapter of a monster that is now, by my Word, 701 pages. Phew!

I'd like to thank everyone who read it, and in particular those who left reviews. I would have written this without any reviews, but nothing is better than finding a couple of notes in your mailbox as proof that other people are reading it as well, and are enjoying it. Or hate it  Sometimes, that's almost as stirring as a positive remark.

So anyway, thank you Jezzworth, ColleenJoy, Jen, em, Deb, ayana45, maria (if you're still here after the shock of the slash chapter), Aimee, Sherri, Katie, FallToPeices, Moe, M, (almost there now, I think, am I missing someone? Yeah:) gioia-gg and tatie, although I've already thanked you at NS  Thanks for reviewing; I appreciate it!

Here's the last of it. Anyone else…I'm still a review whore. Liked it? Tell me! Hated it? Then you could have spent your time better if you made it all the way here :P

Thirty-six: In which Chloe gives Lex the means to say 'I love you'

"And there goes the last one," Valerie said. She waved at a small girl Lex had never really spoken to as she was carried out of the room on her father's arm. The girl waved back enthusiastically. Lex remained as he was, with his back against the wall, out of sight. He'd said goodbye to those kids that mattered, there was no need to expose himself to the others.

"There's still Emmy and Michael."

"Yes, that's true. But in another month those two will be gone as well." Her mouth quirked. "I'll be out of a job."

"LuthorCorp holds more than seventeen hospitals, and a few scores of related institutions. There's always a place for you somewhere." Lex studied her profile as she kept staring out into the now empty room. "You know that. We'll have you everywhere."

"I know." She sighed. "I know, and I appreciate it. But maybe…Maybe it's time for me to move on as well. Or move back."

Lex's heart gave a painful little throb. "You're leaving?"

She turned to face him. "I don't know yet. Maybe. I heard you sent Dr. Potter to Igawi. Is that true?"

"Yes."

"He didn't seem the type to have a secret wish to go to Africa and spent his genius on mundane and boring diseases."

"I made him an offer he couldn't refuse." Lex managed to say this with only the tiniest smirk, and Valerie raised her eyebrows. "Why? Are you planning to back to Africa as well?"

She shrugged. "I haven't decided yet. I hadn't considered returning to Africa, but…Well, after hearing about Potter it did cross my mind." She opened the door to the hallway; Lex closed it behind him when she was through. "Unless," she said, "you need me here."

"Need you?" It came out rather heartless, and that wasn't his intention. "I mean, in what way?" Which sounded even more callous. He liked her, liked her a lot, in fact, and if the circumstances were different he might have done more than like her…but need her?

Her mouth widened. "Just as I said it; nothing more, nothing less. By your reaction I gather you don't."

Lex said nothing, unable to come up with something even remotely adequate. What did she want him to say? That he needed her? That he would crack without her? He wouldn't. _Although she might be able to tell me why my body insists it needs to seek cover while my mind is pretty much ok with the fact that one of my male friends raped me._ He knew he would never talk about that, though. Most certainly not with someone he'd shared his bed with.

"I'm sorry," he said, finally, and she laughed.

"Well, that's the one thing you shouldn't be sorry for. It's good to see you're doing well." She shot him a sideward glance. "How is the ever sprightly Miss Sullivan? She seemed a bit down when I met her last week."

If she thought that would drive him up the wall she was wrong. "Chloe? She's fine. Never better. You met her?" he asked. "I didn't know you knew her."

"We met at the hospital, remember," Valerie said with a twinkle. "And I spoke to her on the phone just before she delivered Amy. She's a remarkable young woman. I ran into her when I was doing my shopping."

"We're both fine," Lex said, wondering what the hell she knew and how much she was implying. Had Chloe talked to her? No. Probably not. Chloe was jealous of Valerie, she wouldn't have raged to her about the lies and horrors she'd discovered in his closets.

"Excellent!" Valerie said.

They entered the cafeteria, Lex bought the most expensive coffee he could find and then they sat down at a table in a corner. Not that there were many people who could overhear what they were talking about, but the need for privacy was so ingrained in his psyche he picked his tables by sheer instinct.

He stirred his coffee with absentminded movements. "_Would_ you stay if I told you I needed you here?" he asked after the twelfth circle of his spoon.

"Of course I would."

"Why?"

She smiled her wide, close-lipped smile. "Because one does not often run into people like you," she said, and he was not at all sure that was a compliment.

"The Rich and Famous, you mean?" he sneered. "Or did you mean the Corrupt and Twisted?"

"Both, I guess," Valerie said tranquilly. "You are a very interesting person. I am glad I've had the chance to get to meet you."

Lex licked his scar. He'd had people tell him he was enigmatic, charismatic, intelligent, cool, charming and funny; in short, he'd had people suck up to him from any direction, but somehow Valerie's words didn't strike him so much as flattering than as an assessment. "You didn't really get to know me the way I usually am," he said, referring to his hellish period of normalness, and only realizing once the words were out that aforementioned normalness included what was possibly the most demeaning experience in his life.

The gleam of teeth appeared between the woman's lips. "Oh, I think I got to know you as well as anyone, red hair or not." The gleam became an ivory half moon before changing back into her ordinary broad, warm smile. "You," she stated, "are a very talented, compassionate and intelligent young man, but you tend to forget you're just that: a young man. So you're filthy rich. So you have half the industrial corporations under your command. So the press claims to know you better than you know yourself. So WHAT? I don't care about that. What I cared about was that you talked to the kids and told them that if other kids bullied them because of their baldness, they should blackmail them. THAT was priceless. Corrupt and Twisted, if you want to put it that way, yes, definitely. Highly unorthodox in any case. But original and apt and amazingly effective, and mostly very much YOU." She nodded to herself. "Chloe Sullivan is very lucky to have you, and you, in turn, should make sure to hang on to her. I like her," she added, as if that was enough reason for Lex to cling tight and hang on.

Lex raised his eyebrows. "What makes you think your opinions have that great an influence on my life?"

"Oh, none whatsoever," she consented immediately. "Apart from the fact that I have a soft spot for happy endings, a reasonably good understanding of how your brain works, and the fact that Chloe Sullivan told me quite a lot about why the two of you fell out."

Lex blinked. He felt as if the bottom of his stomach had just fallen through the floor.

She smiled sweetly. "Don't worry. My lips are sealed. I have no need of blackmail to get what I want."

"What DO you want?" Lex whispered, not knowing whether he should be scared shitless or laughing his head off. It only just occurred to him that the reason why he liked Valerie so much was because she was just as crazy as he was himself. A kindred soul. Stark raving mad.

"Me? Other people to be happy. That's my job, after all: to make sure children are happy despite their wretched situation."

"So," Lex said, amused, "you are going to blackmail me into maintaining my relationship with Chloe Sullivan because you believe it will make me happy?"

"Oh, no. I'm not going to blackmail you at all. Blackmail is so…unsophisticated. This is just my suggestion. Forced relationships rarely end up successful."

"Exactly what did Chloe tell you?"

"Enough to reveal the source of her problems with you, not enough to give me any hold on you." She leaned forward. "She's a sweet girl, and you really hurt her. Then again, I guess she returned the favor tenfold, so I will not bore you with senseless incriminations."

"I might not take kindly to that," Lex agreed dryly.

"No," Valerie said, smiling. "I thought you might not." She shrugged. "I just thought you should know that I know about the connection between your company's error and the reason for this building's foundation, not because you have anything to fear from me, but because me knowing should not be another secret between you and your little reporter. If, of course, she hasn't told you already. By your surprise, I guess she hasn't. Which is wrong, but not unexpected."

It wasn't a secret, Lex figured. Just another truth untold. One that could make him angry, but one which he decided was not worth the trouble. Like his…dealings…with Clark, it was one of those things that was simply very hard to mention. "What," he asked, because that might even be more interesting than his earlier question, "exactly did _you_ tell _Chloe_?"

"What she needed to know."

"Which is?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"If I didn't want to know I wouldn't have asked."

Valerie regarded him silently for a few seconds. "No," she said finally. "if you want to know what I told her, ask her. I'm not going to disclose what I told someone in confidence."

"About me!"

"Precisely." She closed her mouth, pressing her lips firmly together.

Lex looked at her, baffled and irritated, then laughed and finished his coffee. "I'll ask her, then," he said, getting up. "In the meantime, I definitely need you here. So before you go anywhere, give me a call. Don't leave before you have my permission."

"Did I give you the impression I would do anything different?" Valerie asked, looking up with that slow lifting of lashes that was so much more impressive with mascara.

"No," said Lex. He leaned over to her, tipped up her chin and kissed her lips with his mouth closed. "You're my devoted servant, after all. Dedicated to my happiness. Aren't you?"

"Actually," Valerie said, trailing her fingers over his cheek before he pulled back, "I'm just an employee in your LuthorCare hospital. But if you want to see me as such, you are very welcome. Bye Lex."

"Goodbye, Valerie. Call me when you've made up your mind about what you want to do. Whatever it is, wherever it lies, let me know and I'll help you get there."

She nodded. "I'll know when Michael and Emmy are gone."

Lex had the distinct conviction that when Cradle Cancer disappeared from his life, so would Valerie Decan. The thought dispirited him a little, but at the same time it made him feel some kind of relief. She could read him far too well. "I'll come and see you when that time comes."

"I'll give you a call."

"Yes, do that," Lex said. He held out his hand and she took it. And while he would briefly visit the hospital tomorrow, he did not tell her. Even if she was his dedicated servant, she ruffled his confidence, and he was not eager to be ruffled that way more often than once a week.

While Lex was at LuthorCare, Chloe and Clark were taking a much-needed mug of coffee at the Starbuck's nearest to the Daily Planet office. It was way past lunch time or any other break time, but Chloe had worked so ridiculously hard for the past two days that she had decided that a luxurious coffee break was more than due, and Clark…Well, Clark was physically incapable of being late, so he had joined her. They hadn't had the chance to talk since the week before, and Chloe badly needed to share her experiences with someone with a similar new-found appreciation of her current squeeze. In other words: Clark. And Clark was nothing if not obliging.

"So," he said while he sipped his scalding coffee as if it were actually drinkable, "Did Lex like the Zoo?"

"Madly," Chloe said with a grin. She burrowed even deeper into the Starbuck's comfy-chair. "I had to drag him there by his collar and he went screaming and kicking, but hen we were there he could hardly contain his enthusiasm."

Clark snorted. "No, seriously."

"Seriously. Well, it wasn't as if he ran around shrieking with joy, but I do think he enjoyed it—more than he let on, in any case. He liked the sea otters. And I can't tell you how hilarious his imitation of the giant blow fish was."

Clark snorted his coffee through his nose. "Lex imitated a blow fish?"

"And incredibly accurately, too," Chloe said, with relish. "He has VERY flexible cheeks."

Clark wiped his nose with a napkin, giggling helplessly. "So...everything's ok between the two of you?"

She nodded, her grin softening to a smile. "Yeah. Yeah, we are. I mean, you were right and you're right still: the man's an irrepressible liar, a manipulative schemer and fucked up beyond imagination...but..." She tried to think of a word to describe Lex in a way that wouldn't make Clark choke on his coffee again. Sweet. He WAS sweet. Adorable, if he wasn't paying attention. Attentive, considerate, obsessive and scarily charming. Not for one moment had she got the impression that she was no longer an independent woman,

but the naked truth was that Lex organized her schedule and she stuck to it without raising a single protest. He was...

"Irresistibly intelligent," Clark supplied. "That's how they describe him in People," he added defensively when Chloe stared at him. "I think it pins him down like a bug."

"Like a bug, huh? That suits your cockroach theory."

Clark laughed.

Irresistibly intelligent did express it very well, though, although it wasn't half of his charm. Part of her also wanted to cheer 'And oh, the sex! Wow! The sex!" but she doubted Clark would be happy to hear that. He and Lana did have intercourse, she was quite certain about that, but he simply didn't seem the type for dirty locker-talk—especially if the whispering voice from the next locker was a woman's, and glorified another man's family jewels.

Detailed descriptions of Lex's performances in bed was more girl-talk, she figured. Unfortunately she didn't have any friends to whom she could talk about that: Lois thought the idea of sleeping with Lex as repulsive as sleeping with a snail, Lana burst into giggles and blushed bright red whenever you said the words 'penis', 'cock' or 'orgasm', and her friends from the Planet…well, they'd LOVE to hear her talk, but Chloe had well-founded reservations about discussing her sex-life with her fellow reporters.

So she just nodded, agreed, "As cockroaches come, I do think he's pretty irresistibly intelligent, yeah,", leaned forward and asked, "So what happened between the two of you? Did you talk it out, whatever it was that made you hate him? Or is this still the aftermath of you agreeing to supply the cure for those kids of his?"

Clark shrugged, his face taking on that fake-careless expression it always got when he was, maybe not exactly lying, but at least keeping the truth at a far distance. "Something like that."

"Something entirely different, then," Chloe surmised. She was thrumming with curiosity. Lex was much better at lying than Clark, but he hadn't answered this question either, effortlessly evading her with semi-answers or distracting her with other topics. It wasn't that she didn't respect Clark and Lex's privacy. She did. If she didn't, Lex went ballistic and Clark started pretending he was stupid. It was their unwillingness to come up with either a straight answer or a convincing lie that kept worrying at her subconscious like a small but insistent terrier. In her opinion people that wanted you to stop questioning you about a particular topic either told you so straight to your face ('No, I don't want to answer your questions, no comment, get out of my face you fucking paparazzi pest!') or flipped you off with an inventive reply ('We were not, I repeat NOT, aware of the destructive properties of this particular piece of artillery. We are deeply sorry for the immeasurable damage this weaponry has caused.') They did not smile mysteriously, look awkward or smoothly talk over it.

However, that was exactly what both Lex and Clark were doing, and while she could control herself well enough to keep from poking them until they spilled, she WAS intrigued.

"Nope," said Clark. "That's about precisely it. But that's good. You two back together, I mean. Maybe you can stop him from, I don't know...contaminating the ocean or something."

"Why are you avoiding my question?"

Clark was incredibly good at looking innocent and surprised. "What question am I avoiding?"

She sighed. "Never mind. Yes, I'll try to keep him from accidentally blowing up the world. Don't know if I can manage, though."

"I couldn't," Clark said, softer and suddenly serious.

"Well, so far the earth still turns around the sun…"

"No. I mean…Can you keep up with him? Do you understand him? Because I never could. I mean, I KNOW he's cool. I idolized him when I was younger."

_Well, yeah, duh, that's no big revelation_, Chloe thought, but she kept quiet, because if Clark was willing to talk about Lex maybe he'd let something slip. Chloe knew Lois' opinion of Lex to the utmost details. All Clark ever said was 'he's no good', but very little else. She gave an encouraging nod. "He's mainly very funny. Lois didn't believe that."

Clark laughed. "Of course she wouldn't. She hates the ground he walks on. According to Lois, and I'm quoting her on this: 'If fairy princesses leave roses in their footsteps, Lex leaves scorched, barren ground.' She's quite a lost cause. Lex wouldn't bother being charming to someone he knows despises him."

"Unless he saw it as a challenge."

"That's right, the moment he gets the impression he needs Lois for some particular reason he'd turn on his Luthor Care Bear Stare and she'd be dazzled by his unholy radiance."

Chloe guffawed. "Now that is a picture I could do without!"

Clark grinned. "I wonder what his tummy symbol would be."

"A crown and a scepter," Chloe said immediately. "And a slanted L in the background."

"Luthor Bear."

"Well, I'd say it beats 'Clarkbar'."

Clark grimaced, then his mouth curved in fond memory. "I wonder how Pete's doing."

"Well, I guess. He should be in his last year." She sighed. "Another person who disliked Lex by name."

"Mmm," said Clark, with a frown that almost instantly faded and left him looking a little sad, and she knew he was thinking about his father. "The problem is that Lex, by now, has quite lived up to his name."

"He isn't like Lionel."

"No, but he's definitely a Luthor. Whatever that means," he added, undermining his own statement.

Chloe smiled. "Luthor," she started. "Defined mainly by the things they do NOT do. Luthors do not: Fail."

"Dance," Clark supplied. "Except ballroom dancing at horrid stuck-up parties."

"Show weakness. Take time to heal. Apologize. Blush—or feel embarrassed."

"Sleep. Give up. Back down. Trust anyone. Tell the truth."

"Cry when they get hurt," said Chloe, and Clark looked down on his hands.

"They don't show their feelings," he said, looking up into her eyes again. "And that's what made it impossible for me to figure out how he worked. I never knew what he was up to, what he was feeling, what he was planning. I thought he was my friend and it turned out I was his obsession. I never knew until he showed me his Look at the Kents-room. And that…"

"But that isn't all of it," Chloe protested, not as much defending Lex as finding Clark's memory faulty. "It wasn't. He did see you as his friend—much more than he ever saw me when we were all living in Smallville. He was intrigued by you, yes, but because of the PERSON you were first. You saved his life! And, of course, don't let it go to your head, Clark, but I didn't have a crush on you for nothing. You ARE pretty special, whether you can run 800 miles an hour or not. His fascination with WHAT you were came much later…and it wouldn't have grown to such monstrous extremes if you'd just confided in him."

"I know. I know. And I do blame myself for that. But the fact remains that Lex is…how to put it…easily and willingly obsessed with some subjects."

"Don't tone it down on my account," Chloe said calmly. "I know he's a bit crazy. Believe it or not, but that's one of the things I've learned to appreciate." An unexpected chuckle bubbled up her throat. "You should've seen him going through my purse after Edge had sent it back. It was so funny…"

"It isn't so funny when it's YOU he's cataloguing like that," Clark said, and Chloe realized that he could guess _exactly_ how Lex had placed each item exactly two inch apart on the table and studied everything from every side. She could well imagine Lex studying Clark in much the same way, and also how discomforting that must be. She shrugged.

"I'm nothing special. That is to say, I'm not an alien. I can write a passable article, but I'm not worth obsessing over."

"He's already doing that."

"Over me? Don't be an ass."

"And he's doing it admirably well, if you haven't noticed yet," Clark concluded. He was smiling again. "Let me see…How often do you see him?"

"Almost every day. Which, since I'm DATING him, is pretty normal."

"Ok, I'll give you that one. Where do you meet up? Your place or his?"

"His, mostly."

"Why?"

"It's bigger."

"All you need is a bed."

"His bed's bigger too," Chloe deadpanned. "Look, Clark, I appreciate your comparison, but the situation's completely different. You were his underage super powerful doting friend, who was forbidden by his parents to hang out with the evil Luthor boy; he was lonely, bored, and probably missing his addictions from Metropolis. I, however, am a consenting adult of the female sex without any other power than my girl power." She licked her lips; suddenly the need to come clean was overwhelming. "And my reporter power."

Clark raised his eyebrows at the change in her voice.

"Do you know why we fought?" Chloe asked. Clark shook his head. "Because I followed a lead from Edge, and found a shitload of incriminating evidence against Lex, Lionel and LuthorCorp."

"What?" Clark exclaimed, then lowered his voice, even though nobody was paying attention to them. He put his mug down on a table and leaned closer to Chloe. "Edge sent you evidence? As in, your Mr. Smith and our Mr. Jones?"

"Yup."

"Why didn't you tell us?"

"Because I couldn't."

"What do you mean?"

"He approached me." Chloe frowned. "And I didn't want to follow him up, but I did. Why didn't I tell you? I don't know. Maybe because I was ashamed to. Edge…very cunningly drew me in. In retrospect I fell for it very easily. And Lex reacted like he always would in these kind of situations. And the evidence…" She shot Clark a wry grin. "It was spectacular."

"The perfect Pandora's Box," Clark murmured, and once again Chloe reminded herself that Clark really was pretty perfect, himself. She didn't know many people who wouldn't have started screaming _Why not? Why didn't you show us? Why didn't you?._ She knew _she_ would have shouted her throat hoarse if something of the kind would have happened to anyone else.

"Yeah. But I couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it. Betray him. Publish what I'd written. It would have destroyed him. I almost did, though. And you know…I think I still almost destroyed him. That's a kind of power I maybe once would have wanted, but not anymore. Lois wouldn't understand. But you…do you?"

Clark nodded. Again, he focused on his hands, spread open on his thighs. "I do. Again. I mean…yeah. If I'd received the means to put Lex away half a year ago, yeah, then I'd have brought him down. But…" he sneered. It was an expression that looked a bit strange on his face, Chloe thought. She was used to seeing it on Lex's face, directed at himself or other people, but rarely ever on Clark's. "I guess I got charmed again. Does that make me sound gay?"

"Pretty much," said Chloe. "Hands off, Clark," she teased. "He's mine now."

Clark accidentally broke off the ear of his mug. "Oops," he said.

"Hand-eye coordination: failing," Chloe noted, interested.

Clark shrugged. For some reason he was blushing a little. Because of his clumsiness, or because…? Chloe observed him with a studious eye while he reached into his coat's pocket and fished out a small tube of super glue. He'd taken to carrying it with him wherever he went because things tended to end up broken when he visited places. Being able to both exert great pressure and heat up air with his eyes, Clark's quick little repairs to broken crockery, door handles and plates were nothing short of amazing.

"So," she said when the mug was repaired. "why'd you react like that? ARE you gay?"

He looked up from his handiwork with such a stupefied expression she was forced to admit that he probably wasn't. Nevertheless his smile seemed a little strained when he said, "No, Chloe, I'm not. I'm happily in love with Lana. But thanks for asking. And rest assured, I'm most certainly NOT in love with Lex. He's yours. All yours. I give you the responsibility for his welfare and the rest of the world's. Believe me, rather you than me."

"What if he gets shot again?" Seriously, because the way Clark said it almost felt as if he were washing his hands off Lex and that made her skin prickle.

Clark's smile widened. He gave her hand a soft, quick stroke with his fingers. "I was only talking about his mental welfare," he reassured her, "And only if his doesn't endanger yours. Don't worry, he's still on my Make Haste To Save When In Trouble List—or maybe he is again." He sighed. "If only because the world would be so incredibly boring without him. Arrgh. I'm going back to the office before I start saying I wear pink slippers and an apron and like to put on Lana's clothes in front of the mirror because it brings out my feminine side."

Chloe laughed. "You might as well confess to the truth, Clark. You love Lex to bits and you're eaten alive by jealousy he's in my bed and not yours."

Clark's perfect eyebrows did a can-can. "Yeah, right," he said sarcastically. "That must be it. I secretly prefer a bald, sarcastic male with a twisted sense of humor over the sweetest, loveliest, most beautiful girl in the world." (Chloe noted with cheer that Clark saying this about Lana did not, for a change, hurt her feelings at all), "You're welcome to have him, bed and all. Just…make sure he doesn't push you out."

"He won't," Chloe said. "I'll hit him if he does."

Clark nodded briskly. "Good. Just try not to hit him in the head, because whenever I take a 'close' look at his cranium I want to take out my glue and do something about all those fractures. Anyway. Gotta go. Oh, if you see Lois tonight, please tell her to give me back my car keys, will you? Really, that cousin of yours doesn't know when jokes are no longer funny."

"Will do. Where are you off to?"

"Southern Kansas. Plane demonstration."

"Sounds wonderful."

"Uhuh. Especially without a car."

"You can hotwire it?"

"I don't know HOW to hotwire a car. I'm a reporter, not a car thief."

"_I_ know how to hotwire a car."

Clark snorted. "I'll run and make up another convincing story. Just tell Lois to give me back my car keys."

"Ok."

"See you, Chloe."

"See you, Clark. Run carefully."

Chloe smiled. Clark smiled back. He put his hands in his coat pockets and sauntered out of the coffee shop. When she next blinked, he had disappeared.

That Wednesday, Lex was home early—that is to say, before six. Chloe would only arrive in another half hour, and he had ordered dinner to be delivered at seven. He had crawled behind his laptop to take care of some small things, and was now typing an email to Mister Wong, consulting his Chinese dictionary every other sentence. His Outlook program balked at Chinese characters. Lex privately hated Outlook with a vengeance and wondered why LuthorCorp hadn't created their own Email program. Outlook sucked so hard it could suck golf balls through garden hoses.

He clacked his tongue in irritation as an incoming message caused his machine to think about the necessary contraction of two characters. Some time ago he had made a cursor that changed into Rodin's The Thinker whenever Windows needed time to process information; he was now considering making another one shaped like a little man that was yawning. Finally The Thinker stopped thinking and turned back into an arrow. Immediately Lex lost all interest in his unfinished mail.

Because the incoming mail was titled 'So you won again' and was sent by a man Outlook identified as Martin Edge.

"You can't be serious…" Lex breathed. But Outlook never made jokes.

_You survived. _The mail began.

_I give up. _

_I tried to ruin you professionally, and failed._

_I tried to turn your business associates against you, and failed._

_I tried to kill you physically, and I failed again._

_Finally, I set the woman who loved you against you, and still I did not succeed. I know when my failure is complete._

_In the middle ages the people used to believe in something called the Trial of God, or Divine Tribunal. Two men would fight; either the accuser and the accused, or someone, a champion, they had chosen to represent them. It was believed that God himself directed the hand of the winner. The loser, it was claimed, was struck down by God, and the winner was therefore proclaimed innocent by God, and not to be prosecuted._

_I know you are not innocent. But I do know when to admit defeat. Perhaps I am not the right champion to bring you down. I have faith that one day, someone will stand up, take justice's sword and end you, be it professionally, socially, or physically. I only know it won't be me._

_I know you have been searching for me. You can stop. You won't find me. Unlike my one-time attempt at being an executor, I prepared my flight very, very carefully, just like I planned my psychological seduction of Miss Sullivan very, very carefully. Tracing this email address will lead you nowhere; I am far away and you will not find me. I doubt we will ever meet again—although, you never know what fate has in store for you._

_I cannot say that I enjoyed the descent into madness that profiling you brought me. Only now I realize how deeply fighting you affected me, and how dark my thoughts had become. My only consolation is that it must have altered you, as well. In a way, you have been brought to justice, and if you survived it, well, I can be generous and say that it was the outcome of a Trial of God._

_There will be another champion. One day you will go down. Until then, I salute you, and I yield the victory to you._

_Yours,_

Martin Edge

"This email will destroy itself in ten seconds," Lex muttered to himself. "Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven." He selected the mail and suspended his finger above the Del key. "Six. Five. Four. Three. Two." He skimmed the contents one last time. "One." He pressed delete. Then he went to his deleted messages and crossed the motherfucker out there, too. He searched his entire mail server to see if there was any last trace of Edge and his mail, but it was gone. Edge was gone.

He sat back, and noticed he was shaking like a leaf. When he picked up the glass of whiskey he'd poured before starting his mail to Wong the liquid sloshed against his mouth with the trembling of his hand.

He looked at the rows of Chinese characters and moaned aloud. _That was stupid! I shouldn't have deleted that! Why on earth did I delete it? It might have given me a clue to his whereabouts!_

He knew, however, that Edge's mail would have yielded no information whatsoever, just as it had promised. But still…It had been a knee-jerk reaction, and Lex prided himself on being able to repress reflexes like that. Apparently not. Subconsciously, he rubbed his shoulder. The wound had closed, and none of the holes Edge had shot in him hurt him anymore, but all of a sudden he was very much aware of each of the smooth, pink scars those bullets had left on him.

Like it or not, Edge still scared the hell out of him. Both because of the pain and blood loss he'd caused, and later, because of the mental anguish he'd instigated. Martin Edge, Lex thought, might very well be the most dangerous enemy he'd ever made, even if, according to his own words, he was no longer a real threat.

"Another champion, huh," he muttered aloud, and finished his Lagavulin in one big gulp. "I'll deal with them when they come."

He was exceedingly grateful when Victor rang to tell him that Miss Sullivan was on her way up (even though Chloe had a key, the guards insisted upon notifying him, which Lex thought an excellent service). He saved his message to Wong, intending to finish it at a later time, shut down his computer and was just closing the lid when Chloe thrust her key into the door.

By the time she had taken off her coat, scarf and mittens his hands were completely steady again. "Hey there," he said, inhaling the scent of her hair (shampoo and 'outside') as she flung her arms around his neck and pressed her cold red cheek against his. "Cold outside?"

"Didn't you notice?"

"I was busy." Half of the time he had no idea whether it was summer, spring, fall or winter. Inside his head there were no seasons.

Chloe tsk-ed. "You're missing out, Lex. It's lovely outside." She plunked down on a chair. "What are you doing? Did I interrupt anything?"

"Not really," said Lex. He looked at the white sweater with blue tassels she was wearing, frowned and canted his head. The fabric gleamed. It looked like very fine wool but obviously wasn't. He reached out a tentative finger and poked her sleeve.

Chloe's mouth wobbled. "Uh, Lex? What are you doing?"

"What the hell are you wearing?"

"It's a sweater?"

"But what is it made of?"

She gaped at him, then grinned and entered the game. "I have no idea. Something poly-something. Here, feel it! It's elastic yet warm. I have a matching scarf." She ran to the hall and came back with, indeed, a white and blue scarf that matched her sweater. "Here, try it on."

"Keep it away from me! It's unnatural."

"But just feel it! It's soft! It feels wonderful."

"Did it grow on a sheep, or any other animal?"

"No, but..."

"On a bush?"

"No! But..."

"Did it come out of an insect?"

"I don't think so."

"Is it made of the skin of some dead animal?"

"No animals were harmed during the production of this piece of clothing."

"Then I won't wear it." Lex said firmly.

"Oh for god's sake..."

"Exactly. If god didn't create it, I won't wear it on my skin."

"You wear silk!"

"Insect."

"Oh, yeah. Right. What about velvet?"

"Do I look like someone who'd wear VELVET?? Besides, velvet's usually made of silk; if I ever felt the need to dress up like a vampire I could wear a velvet cape—as long as no lycra was added."

"What about jeans? You do wear jeans, occasionally, do you?"

"Jeans are made of denim. Denim's made of cotton. Cotton grows on bushes."

Chloe growled. Then she perked up and grinned. "Rubber comes from trees."

"I somehow get the idea that my colleagues will react strangely if I were to enter my office dressed in rubber," Lex deadpanned. "Not to mention my father."

Chloe lost a brief struggle with her mirth before stating, "But it is natural."

"Absolutely. So is nettle cloth, but I doubt I'll ever feel the need to wear shirts made of nettle cloth."

"So there are things created by god you won't wear."

"God didn't create nettle cloth," Lex said with conviction. "Satan did."

Chloe shook her head and shrugged her shoulder comfortably in her soft poly-something sweater. Lex rubbed his hands over his 100 cotton shirt, as if wiping off the feel of unnaturalness of the condemned fabric. She laughed. "You are so weird."

Lex smiled. The final jitters caused by Edge's mail had completely disappeared. He gripped the offending sweater—which, indeed, felt perfectly fine and did look very good on her—between thumb and finger and jerked at it. "You'd look much better without it."

"You have the most one-tracked mind I've ever met."

"I am not sure that sentence is grammatically possible."

"Swallow it and like it, Lex. I will not be parted from my sweater this easily."

"No?" Lex asked. "Wanna bet?"

Fortunately for Chloe's sweater dinner arrived at that time. Unfortunately for the sweater she dropped a piece of sautéed potato in red wine sauce on her chest with her first bite. Lex sniggered. Chloe glowered at him. "You have cursed my sweater with your evil vibes."

"You can have one of mine," Lex said reassuringly. "Besides, didn't I tell you you'd look much better without it?"

Two and a half hours later Chloe (sans sweater, and pretty much sans any clothing) lay drowsing against Lex's chest in bed while Lex obsessively watched the news on every channel he could find. He'd watched seven different kinds of news by now, of which only two had English-speaking anchors. Chloe, no stranger to the desire to know what was going on in the world, had closed her eyes after the Spanish news, tried to distract Lex after the French news, and given up when her administrations left him nicely erect but still focused on the news. She trailed lazy circles over his chest in her half-sleep, waking up entirely only when he picked up her hand and put it back down on his stomach.

"Why do you do that?" she asked.

"Hmm?" Apparently the news had ended. He zapped to another channel.

She put her hand back on his chest. Lex just as automatically moved it to his stomach.

"That. Are you ticklish?"

"Hmm?" He looked down on her, and she put her hand on his chest again. "Oh. That. Yes, a little. Oh, by the way, Valerie Decan told me to say hi. I saw her today."

_Shit: there is the fan. You can either hit it full-on or miss._ "Oh," Chloe said faintly. She swallowed, but Lex didn't look mad. Expectant, but not mad. "She told you." Lex waited. "That I told her about the Cradle Cancer and the poisonous fertilizer."

"Not in so many words," Lex said. He had the gall to look somewhat smug. "But yes, she did. I only have one question. Why? Why Valerie? You hate her."

"I don't hate her!" Chloe protested. Lex smirked. "I just don't…like her very much. But she…I mean you and her…"

"Had sex. But that was before you…"

"That is not what I'm trying to say!"

"Oh," said Lex. "Sorry." He gave her a quick squeeze.

Chloe was too nervous to be angry and plowed on ahead full throttle. "The two of you are friends, right? And she's a doctor. And I really needed someone objective to talk to, and she was the only one I could think of. I just happened to bump into her. I was buying fresh produce from the Vegetable Mob a couple of streets away from my house…"

"Paulino's?" Lex asked, then raised his hand to indicate she should go on and pay no attention to his random remarks.

"Yes," Chloe said, feeling much calmer because of the random remark. "Paulino's. She happened to be there, we got talking, and we ended up talking for almost an hour over coffee."

"About me," Lex said, wheedling.

Chloe grinned. So that was it. The man was human after all. "Yes, Lex, about you. I was mad at you, and she helped me to get a better understanding of you."

"How?"

"Tell me something first."

"What?"

"While we were talking, Valerie told me that she'd caught you at a very vulnerable time, and that that prevented you from having a relationship with her. Or something like that." She noticed that Lex had gone rigid. "So," she said, searching his impassive face for a trace of emotion, any emotion, "I said that you couldn't possibly have been more vulnerable than you were when you were bleeding to death in the forest, but she said you were. What the hell was she talking about?"

A slow bloom of red rose in Lex's cheeks, visible in the light from the television. "If I tell you," he said, "will you tell me what Valerie said about me?"

Chloe considered. She wasn't sure she wanted to tell Lex that his still-befriended-ex had compared him to a crushed coffee bean. On the other hand she was dying to know what Lex's moment of supreme vulnerability entailed. "Ok."

"I couldn't get it up with her," said Lex. "Your turn."

"Wh-what?"

"Could. Not. Get. It. Up." Lex repeated patiently. His face looked a bit odd, all red but still expressionless. "Tell me."

"You went FLACID on her ass?" Chloe gasped.

"Not on her ass," Lex said with a strange twitch of his mouth. He waited until Chloe stopped whooping with laughter. "So? And?"

"I'm…I'm s-sorry," Chloe giggled, wiping her eyes. "It's just…that's the ONE thing I never would've thought to hear coming from you. I mean…you! The one thing that ALWAYS works is…"

"Yes, thank you," Lex said dryly. "We had a deal here, Sullivan. What did she tell you about me, and why did it change your mind about ditching your Pulitzer Prize-to-be?"

Chloe put her hand on his cheek. Smooth and hot, but cooling. Embarrassment slid off of Lex like water from a candle. "Don't be mad?"

"If it changed your mind, why should I be mad?"

"She made me feel sorry for you."

Again, Lex stiffened. "Sorry?" he drawled dangerously.

She thwacked his arm. "You promised you wouldn't be mad."

"Why would you feel SORRY for me? I don't need to be pitied!"

"I wasn't talking about pity. You'd been a bastard to me, and the last thing I've ever felt for you is pity. But she said…what it comes down to is that someone who needs as many masks as you, who feels the need to put up a mask as often as you do—and you do, Lex, you still do—must somehow feel the need to protect what's below the mask because it can't stand up for itself."

"I can…" Lex started vehemently, but he stopped when she hit his arm again and sat up on her knees.

"I'm not implying you're some poor, helpless boy," she said, "and neither did Valerie. Really, we know better. But she did make me realize that what I was doing to you was far, far worse than anything you could ever do to anyone you've ever loved. And that I, since I claimed to love you, would be a truly HORRIBLE person if I went on with my misguided vengeance. By making me feel sorry for you, she made me feel like the most detestable, hypocritical bitch in the world."

She looked away. "It was not a pleasant conversation."

Lex stroked her hair away from her face. "But," he murmured, "why did you need Valerie to tell you that?"

She snorted. "Because while you may be a lying, scheming bastard, I am quite the hypocritical bitch." Lex surprised her by starting to laugh; first just a quirk of his mouth, then a smile and finally an honest chuckle. "You're not mad?"

"No. I told you I wouldn't be mad and I never go back on my word. No, I was just thinking what a pretty pair we make. Me with the lying and the scheming and you with the hypocritical bitchiness." He sat up and kissed her, slow and thorough and long.

"Wow," Chloe sighed, when she had caught her breath. "You must really like hypocritical bitches."

"I love 'em," said Lex, and stiffened for the third time that evening. As she lay back down beside him, Chloe decided that there really should be a way to make him lose his fears for saying the word 'love'. And there was, if she remembered correctly. She smiled. It would be the perfect gift. She would buy it the very first thing tomorrow.

Thursday afternoon. Lex was sitting at a corner table of a small restaurant, whiling away the few minutes before his appointment by studying and calculating the levels of cholesterol contained in the food on the menu.

_This burger is enough to cause cardiac arrest all by itself, _he was thinking, and then a shadow fell over the greasy card. He looked up, and up, and up, and finally met the eyes of the person he'd been waiting for.

"Clark."

"Hey Lex." Clark regarded him apprehensively, as if he wasn't sure Lex wasn't going to freak out and run at the sight of him, but when Lex faced him with a pleasant smile he relaxed and returned the smile. He wore his Daily Planet suit, and Lex thought it looked very strange on him. Not bad—Clark could wear a potato bag and look stunning—but out of place and strange.

_It's the lack of flannel._ Lex searched his own psyche for signs of panic or fear. There was a small trill of nervousness somewhere very far down, but no subconscious reactions or fleeing urges. That was good. Maybe he could stop having nightmares about that careless finger on his breast bone, holding him down, now. Especially after having sex with his magnificent girlfriend.

_Are you going to tell me what you were dreaming about?_ she'd asked, that memorable evening almost two weeks ago. Lex had implied he had dreamed about golden monkeys—which was a lie. It seemed he couldn't stop lying even if he wanted to. But come on, what else could he have said?

_Why yes, of course, Chloe, I was dreaming about how your best friend and former sweet-heart burst into my apartment and raped me. Don't look so shocked, dear. Apart from the contusions, the feeling of total helplessness and the fricking hangover I got from his pheromones—yeah, pheromones, honey—it was really quite pleasurable. He actually went down on me. Can you imagine that? Clark Kent going down on me, just like you sometimes do. He's quite good at it, would you believe it? What's more, I offered him to come back and do it again whenever he feels the need. I mean, what's a nightmare or two compared to OWNING Clark Kent, Alien boy extraordinaire?_

It was a bond weaker than love but stronger than friendship, stronger, even, than blackmail, because it combined both of the above, and added a healthy dose of shame and dependence. Clark would never trust him like Chloe now did—because he wasn't willing to go as far as she was willing to go for Lex—but he did trust Lex completely to both keep this a secret and to be there if Clark needed him. WHEN Clark needed him. Lex was convinced the time would come again that Clark would start burning up on the inside. He hoped it wouldn't be soon, but a part of him was looking forward to it as well. For one, because he was confident Clark would take better care not to hurt him this time. For another…It was certainly a heady feeling to be needed by the strongest person on earth, and to be able to extract information about said person _from_ said person, without being rebuked, classified as an obsessed freak or carelessly tossed about the room.

Lex's silence gave him a certain power over Clark, even as he was giving up some of it right now, and this giving up would only strengthen his hold on Clark, and power was something Lex craved like food, water or sunshine.

Other people were alcoholics. Or addicted to heroin. Everyone their own, Lex figured. His addiction was rather harmless. Especially since his stuff now came out to meet him after one short telephone, and shook his hand before sitting down at the same table.

"You wanted to see me."

"Yes," Lex said. He lifted the small container from its place at his feet, put it in front of him on the table and, after a small victory over himself, pushed it to Clark's side of the table.

"What's this?" Clark asked. He studied it, then frowned as his X-ray bounced off of it—or at least, that was what Lex thought caused the frown.

"Open it."

"What's inside?"

"It's a nuclear bomb, Clark. It will go off when you open the lid and blow this whole earth to smithereens. Open it."

Clark raised one eyebrow before shrugging and clicking the box open. He frowned again. "Is this my blood?"

"Yes." _AND GIVE IT BACK TO MEEEEE!!_ "That vial on the left is what's left of it. The other five are manipulated samples, used to try out the treatment. And that other box holds plasma. All yours. Here it is, back again." He leaned back in his chair, making sure not to stare at the container with vials as if it was something he desperately wanted.

"This is all?" Clark asked, not mistrustfully but simply curious.

"Yes. Well, we have a few doses of the treatment in store, but I'd like to hang on to those in case there is another…"

"No, yes, of course," Clark said hastily. He closed the box, stared at it. "So what am I supposed to do with this?"

"I don't know," Lex said. "Destroy it. Bury it. Keep it safe. I don't know."

"Why didn't you destroy it?"

Lex smiled. "Because I couldn't do that."

"If you expose it to kryptonite…"

"That is not the kind of inability I was speaking about," Lex said calmly. "And you know that. So I'd appreciate it if you didn't offer to give it back to me so I can destroy it for you, or tell me to hang on to it in case something happens to either you or some sick person. Just take it and…do with it what you want, just take it out of my sight." He blinked. Clark was gone. The container was gone as well. He blinked again. Clark was back. The container was not.

"Gone," said Clark, reaching for his wallet. "Do you want coffee?"

"Where did you…?"

"Nuh-uh, Lex. Coffee?" He was grinning now, not smiling but grinning like a teenager.

Most alcoholics did not fall hopelessly in love with their bottle. Then again, most bottles did not come from outer space. _I definitely need to get away from him. One person capable of ripping out my heart is more than enough, really. Let's stick with the adorable blonde with the million dollar smile and leave the strapping young alien alone, shall we? Let's stay HEALTHY._

"Sure," he said, helplessly returning that grin. "After getting me a cure for cancer you can get me a cup of coffee too. Black. With sugar. Please."

EPILOGUE

At five o' clock on Thursday Chloe Sullivan breezed into Lex's office, just as he got off the phone to make final arrangements for their flight early the next morning.

"Chloe," he said, surprised. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be home, packing?"

"Yes," she said, grinning from ear to ear, full wattage, almost blinding. "I should, but I got you something and I think you should have it. So you can get used to it." Incredibly, her grin got even wider. Her number of teeth was amazing.

"Don't tell me you've bought me a butt plug," said Lex, "Because I can tell you straight away that I won't use it."

Chloe guffawed. "No," she laughed. "No, I didn't buy you that. Where is it?" She dug into her purse, that famous and infamous purse, and fished out a small package in red wrapping paper. "Here!"

Lex accepted it with caution.

"Oh come on, open it. It won't bite you."

Lex carefully removed the paper, very much aware of the light shining from the grinning girl on his face and fingers.

It was a small monkey, about three inches tall. He supposed it could be worn as a key chain—the kind he'd never wear.

"Cute," he said, eyeing the thing with amused wariness. "A monkey."

"It's not golden. Press it," Chloe said. "Go on, press its belly."

Lex squeezed the monkey. As he did so, two red lights bloomed behind its cheeks, it made a smacking sound, like a kiss by a demented old aunt, and proclaimed: "I love you!" Lex winced.

Chloe chuckled. "You can practice with it," she said smugly. "You know, get used to the phrase. It won't mind if you say it back, either."

Lex shivered. "Your solution to my mental deficiency to appreciate the words 'I love you' is a talking key chain?"

"Well, it's either the key chain or me. I love you." Lex winced. "I love you." Lex winced. "I love you."

Lex sighed. He pressed the monkey's belly. "I love you!" it chirped. He looked up and met Chloe's eyes, grinning.

"No," she said, realizing what made him laugh. "No, Lex, you can't use it as a spokesperson."

"I love you!" cheered the monkey. Lex stroked it with his finger. "What an _excellent_ gift! Do they also come in 'You're fired!'?"

THE END

Cheers!

Kitty


End file.
